Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 Motherboard

On-Board Peripherals

The Intel Z77 chipset is a single-chip solution, which is also known as a PCH (Platform Controller Hub). This chip supports two SATA-600 ports and four SATA-300 ports, supporting RAID (0, 1, 10, and 5). The SATA-300 ports and the SATA-600 ports are located at the motherboard’s edge and rotated 90°.

The portrayed motherboard also offers four SATA-600 ports controlled by two Marvell 88SE9172 chips, supporting RAID 0 and 1.

Figure 6: The four additional SATA-600 ports (gray), four SATA-300 ports (black) and the two SATA-600 ports controlled by the chipset (white)

The Intel Z77 chipset supports 14 USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ports. The Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 offers four USB 2.0 ports available through two headers located on the motherboard; and 10 USB 3.0 ports, six on the motherboard rear panel (two controlled by the chipset and four controlled by a VIA VL800 chip) and four available through two headers on the motherboard (two controlled by the chipset and two controlled an EtronTech EJ168 chip).

The Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 doesn’t support FireWire ports.

This motherboard supports 7.1+2 audio format, i.e., eight channels plus two independent channels for audio streaming. On this motherboard, the audio is generated by the chipset using the Realtek ALC898 codec, which is an outstanding solution, providing an impressive 110 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog outputs, 104 dB signal-to-noise ratio for the analog inputs, and up to 192 kHz sampling rate for both inputs and outputs, with 24-bit resolution. This means you are able to capture and edit analog audio (e.g., converting LPs to CDs or MP3, converting VHS to DVDs or any other digital format, etc.) with this motherboard without adding any background noise.

The motherboard has on-board optical SPDIF output. A header labeled “SPDIF_O” also provides SPDIF output for you to install a coaxial SPDIF output or to route digital audio to older video cards that require this physical connection in order to have digital audio output in their HDMI connectors.

The Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 comes with a PCI Express x1 card including Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n networking (supporting 2.4 GHz/5 GHz dual-band connection, which offers higher bandwidth than single-band devices) and a Bluetooth 4.0 interface.

Figure 7: Wi-Fi card

The portrayed motherboard has two Gigabit Ethernet ports, one controlled by the chipset and using an Intel WG82579V chip to make the physical layer interface, and t
he other controlled by an Atheros AR8161 chip.

In Figure 8, you can see the motherboard rear panel with shared PS/2 connector for keyboard and mouse, six USB 3.0 ports, VGA output, DVI-D output, optical SPDIF output, DisplayPort output, HDMI output, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, and the analog audio jacks.

Figure 8: Motherboard rear panel