Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 TH Motherboard

Conclusions

The Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 TH is targeted to the user who wants a motherboard with Thunderbolt ports and needs features not available on the Z77X-UP4 TH from the same manufacturer. The main differences that were added on the UP5 include the dual-band Wi-Fi/Bluetooth 4.0 expansion card, a high-end audio codec, two FireWire ports, one additional SATA
-600 port, the inclusion of one eSATA-600 port, two additional USB 3.0 ports, a POST diagnostics display, and voltage monitoring points. For the user who is building a system to work professionally with audio and video editing or the user who wants to have the motherboard with the highest number of features possible, we consider the Z77X-UP5 TH a far better option than the UP4, even though it costs more.

Other advantages of the portrayed motherboard are the same as the ones found on the Z77X-UP4 TH, such as the configuration for the PCI Express x16 slots. Usually, on motherboards based on the Z77 chipset, only the first two PCI Express x16 slots are controlled by the CPU. The other PCI Express x16 slots are controlled by the chipset, operating at a lower speed (almost always x4) and only compatible with the 2.0 specification, which offers half of the 3.0 bandwidth. On this motherboard, however, the three slots are controlled by the processor. On the other hand, when three video cards are installed, the second and the third slot work at x4 speed.

Another highlight of this motherboard includes the presence of an mSATA slot (even though it is SATA-300 and shared with one of the available SATA-300 ports); two BIOS chips; a PLX PEX8605 chip that allows performance to stay high when the Thunderbolt ports are used in conjunction with SATA-600 and USB 3.0 ports; an excellent voltage regulator circuit; and decent overclocking features, including the possibility of configuring the CPU base clock in 0.01 MHz increments.