Gigabyte Intel Z77 LGA 1155 AMD CrossFireX/NVIDIA SLI W/ HDMI,DVI,DispayPort Dual UEFI BIOS ATX Motherboard GA-Z77X-UD3H
This is motherboard is great for its price. It utilizes the iCore Ivy Bridge internal processor graphics ability delivering great graphics. Installation is a breeze.
Pros:
-On-board power switch
-Dual bios
-Onboard LED Red Light Status Indicator to tell you what is the current status of the motherboard
e.g AE, OK, CK (CHECK), ER (ERROR)
-Lots of USB 3.0
-HDMI Support
Cons:
-Earlier Windows 7 Versions don't support USB 3.0
-Only has USB 3.0 ports on the rear panel
-Buy USB 2.0 internal adapter for installation
This was my first "EUFI" build and it was for a Kubuntu Linux box for a client, so I was a bit worried about the new bios. Nothing to fear though. It was a great experience. Like another reviewer noted, it didn't detect the speed of the RAM correctly on first boot, so I changed it manually. No big deal. I plan to build one of these for myself next.
I have owned this motherboard for over a week. Used a 3570k i5 with 2x 4gb 1600MHz corsair vengance memory. It flys. Very happy, but there is one issue. Four of the six usb 3.0 ports are made by Via. They will drop usb 2.0 devices (like my USB sound card for instance) randomly. It needs a software update that is NOT on gigabytes web site. Im not sure if Amazon will allow me to post a link, but here is where I found the updated drivers: [...]
I found them by googling VL800 via drivers. It is on their homepage. Once this is done, the USB 2.0 support is back to normal.
PROS: Great overclocking. Precise voltage monitoring/execution. Nice bios interface (press F1 to get past the gimicky 3D bios).
CONS: Vl800 usb ports >:|
Highly recommended. I only use Gigabyte for myself, family, and customers of mine. Every Asus motherboard I have ever used/built with has given me many problems.
Just as the title says, Gigabyte has produced yet another great motherboard. I have had zero (yes zero) problems with this board. The 3d bios is kinda funky, as I am used to plain text, but it gives people more of an opportunity to overclock. The EZ tune software also produces great results with little to no effort. Make sure you are watching your temperatures if you do decide to overclock. You don't want to ruin your system just because the ease is provided for you.
Plugged into the motherboard is an i7, coolermaster hyper 212 cooler, 7970, 16 gb HyperX ram and numerous case fans. Again, I would recommend this motherboard in a heard beat. It has served me well, and will continue to do so.
Very nice board, very heavy and solid.
Built a system with this a couple of months ago, utilizing an Intel 3750K processor, 2x4GB G.Skill Ripjaws X memory, and a Sapphire Radeon 7850 PCI 3.0 video card hard-coded to GEN3 in the BIOS, along with two system boot drives in a RAID 1 configuration.
It's been rock-solid and stable, running Intel Turbo-Boost (set to take the processor up as high as 4.0Ghz from 3.4Ghz), with the memory running in Turbo mode with the XMP Profile enabled, and with the latest "official" BIOS (F11).
There was only one issue, which almost caused me to return the board to Amazon. When I first powered up the system (before installing the graphics card), I had the monitor plugged into the on-board video output. There was no video. The BIOS would boot up, and stop with what looked like diagnostic code "Ab" on the LED ("Ab" is "Detect SCSI Devices"), with the monitor saying "No Signal". I couldn't get into the BIOS.
At first, I assumed that the board was dead, and I'd have to return it. Then, some searching on the web revealed that "Ab" is often a mis-reading of "A6". "A6" is "BIOS is waiting for a command from the keyboard".
A little experimenting revealed that if I powered up the system with the monitor disconnected, got to "A6", and THEN connected the monitor, I would get video and could work in the BIOS.
This was inconvenient, but once I got my graphics card installed and connected the monitor to the graphics card, everything worked as expected. I considered knocking a star off for this, but decided to treat it as a minor startup transient.
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