GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD4H (rev. 1.0) Pro Reviews

The Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H has some things going for it. It is has a well laid out design and a great look. The Z77X-UD4H is also incredibly fast (compared to other Z77 motherboards) in our benchmarks which is not something we have had the opportunity to say about any Z77 motherboard. So Gigabyte has some secret sauce in its design somewhere. The Z77X-UD4H does suffer from a small hit on the overclocking front for those looking for edge of the envelope clock rates. At $164.99 with Free Prime Shipping the Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H is a decent value as long as modern fully functional BIOS and overclocking software are not on your list.

What is most apparent in the benchmark and overclock numbers with these three Gigabyte boards is that they’re nearly perfectly matched in terms of performance. All other factors being equal, they delivered virtually identical scores and overclocks. Although the fact that the Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H, UP5 TH, and UP7 motherboards offer up such similar performance may be unexciting to users who are likely to spend a bit more on a component to get an edge on performance, what this tells us is that Gigabyte has strong consistency in manufacturing. Gigabyte boards are typically solid, and these overclocking tests solidify that point somewhat.It’s worth mentioning, then, that when you drop more cash on one of Gigabyte’s mainboards, you’re mostly paying for features as opposed to performance: The UD4H only costs around $165, while the UP5 TH is about $250, and the UP7--which, to be fair, has an impressive list of features and a far more extensive accessory bundle--will run you in the neighborhood of $400. In any case, hitting 4.6GHz with mainstream cooling and modest voltages is a solid mark. We definitely could have pushed the system higher and likely could have maintained stability for a while, but we found that at 4.7GHz and even 4.8GHz, CPU core temps quickly climbed upwards of 100 degrees C with the Corsair H55 we were using, and a CPU has no business running that hot for any length of time.

From your Average Joe to your overclocking-focused enthusiast, this is a motherboard that ticks many boxes and that does most things very well. It has just about everything you could want in a Z77 LGA1155 motherboard, unless you want more or should I say different connectivity, in which case GIGABYTE offers quite a few other models that should meet your criteria while sharing the same basic genes as the easily recommendable Z77X-UD4H.

The Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H is the quintessential mid-range motherboard, targeted to users who want to buy a good-quality product with more features than entry-level products, but don’t want to spend a lot of money on a high-end model. The highlights of this motherboard include the presence of eight USB 3.0 ports, two additional SATA-600/eSATA ports, three PCI Express x16 slots supporting SLI and CrossFireX, a decent voltage regulator circuit, a POST diagnostics display, two BIOS chips, voltage monitoring points, an adequate audio codec for mainstream users, independent analog audio jacks, and more. We believe that the price for this motherboard (USD 165) is right for what it has to offer, being a nice option if you are looking for the features it offers.