The Board - A Closer Look

Taking a closer look at how the board works, I immediately noticed a few things that are different from other boards, even other Gigabyte boards. The normal DualBIOS function is there, but in the most user-adjustable way ever. If you look closely at the first image above, you'll see the dual BIOS chips and that each one has a clearly labeled LED near-by. The second image above shows the switches located at the board's bottom edge. It lets you chose which one is in play, and not only can you choose which BIOS is the primary one, you can also disable the secondary BIOS through the other switch. The "M/B" switch allows you to pick the main and backup BIOS, while the "SB" switch enables the "Single BIOS" mode.


The main reason for DualBIOS technology is, of course, that BIOSes can fail. There is a dual-digit LED display, also located on the board's bottom edge, right near the BIOS switches, to give an indication of why a boot failed. Since the Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 just isn't a normal board, and although even normal users can find uses for the DualBIOS tech, there's far more – located at the top-right of the board – to booting up the board with the Gigabyte Z77X-UP7. There, we find seven buttons, two of which are pretty straight forward: ON/OFF and CMOS_Clear. The other five are for clock adjustments while the board is running; a mode that can be adjusted in granularity by pressing the button labeled "Gear". Pressing that "Gear" button switches between 1.0 and 0.1 MHz of granularity. The pair of "+" and "-" buttons next to the "Gear button" is for BLCK adjustments, while the set above that is to adjust multipliers. There's also a switch to enable an "LN2 mode" near-by, as well as several voltage read points that have pads you can touch with multi-meter's leads. The board also comes with a set of wires you can stick into the provided plugs, which would allow you to stick your meter in to free your hands up for other things.


There are two 8-pin EPS plugs to ensure that you can provide any amount of power needed by your SKT 1155 CPU for an overclock. The PCIe ports get a similar boost via a SATA-type plug located on the board's right edge – a great spot to make cable management easy.


The CPU VRM is controlled by an International Rectifier IR3563A part found between the DIMM slots and the upper VRM cooler. It mates with several IR3550M PowIRstages shown in the second image above. Those IR3550M parts in that picture are actually part of the DIMM VRM, a triple-phase implementation fully shown in the third image above. It has its own independent IR3570A controller, which you see there as well.


There are two separate LAN controllers on the Gigabyte Z77X-UP7. One is from Intel and one is from Atheros. I've seen both many times before, and the option of either should keep any user happy.


Additional USB 3.0 ports on the board's bottom edge are provided by an Etrontech EJ168A controller, while the extra ports on the back panel are provided by a VLI controller. The VLI VL800-Q8 controller is capable of pushing four ports, which means that the other two ports on the rear panel are driven by the Intel Z77 Express PCH.


The additional SATA ports, clearly denoted by grey ports, instead of the black and white ports used for the Intel-based ports, are provided by matching Marvell 88SE9172-NNX2 controllers. Each of these is placed as close to the ports themselves as possible, as you can see in the images above.


Audio and video output duties on the Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 are provided by ASMedia ASM1442 parts for the video and a Realtek ALC898 CODEC for audio duties. I noticed that the Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 uses a 10-layer PCB, which will hopefully help audio quality a fair bit!


The add-on WLAN card provided with the Gigabyte Z77X-UP7 is the same as the one I covered recently with other Gigabyte board products – a Bluetooth and WLAN controller fit into an mPCIe port that sit in the middle of a PCIe x1 add-in card. There's a separate antenna for each interface, as well as a USB cable to connect the Bluetooth portion to the board itself via an internal USB 2.0 header.


The cooling is pretty awesome, and it does, in my opinion, really harken back to old DFI products that were fitted with ThermalRight-designs; cooling that obviously stuck in many people's minds given the comments when the board was first presented. There are four separate elements: one on the PCH, one in the middle of the board over the PLX PEX8747, and two more pieces over the board's CPU VRM. Each is fitted with anodized black and orange parts and is equipped with a ton of fins to maximize the surface area and, thereby, its cooling ability. All four elements are joined via 6mm heatpipes, and looking at the middle portion that sits over the PLX PEX8747, you can clearly see how the cooler has been assembled using many pieces; like in a clever jigsaw puzzle.

So wow, that's a lot, isn't it? As much as I wanted to simplify things here, there was no way to avoid being a bit long-winded, but such a complexity also makes the board prone to many different possibilities of failure. Has Gigabyte pulled it all off? Let's take a look!