Gigabyte Intel Z77 LGA 1155 AMD CrossFireX/NVIDIA SLI Dual LAN Dual UEFI BIOS ATX Motherboard GA-Z77X-UD5H
I used this board because it was recommended on Tonymac's site as a good piece of hardware for hackintosh. I'm sure it works great for Windows as well. I've gotten everything working except sleep mode as I haven't taken the time to sort it out (I rarely use sleep as I just usually leave my computer on 24/7). But the sleep is supposed to work and plenty of others have sorted it out so I assume it shouldn't be an issue.
I bought this motherboard to build my Ivy Bridge Hackintosh and was extremely happy of how simply it was to set up the BIOS and easily overclock my Intel 3570k i5 CPU to 4.2GHz using air-cooling heatsink. Installed mac OS X 10.8.2 with very little hoc-ups along the way. Using a Nvidia GTX 670 video card with the mono and games simply are smooth as butter. Currently getting 100 to 180 FPS in warcraft with high settings. Highly recommend this mobo for any PC/Hackintosh build.
After a thorough review of most available Z77 motherboards, I decided to give this Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H a try. For me, it came down to this board or the Asus P8Z77-V Pro or Deluxe. Since I did not care about built in WiFi or Thunderbolt compatibility, I opted for the lower priced Gigabyte board that (other than the features mentioned) offers everything the Asus boards have and then some. I had not purchased a Gigabyte board in at least 10 years as I always found Asus boards met my needs better. The one exception was an EVGA P55 board purchased four years ago (big mistake, they can't seem to get their BIOS right).
This is what I have in my system:
Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H
Intel Core i7 3770K CPU
Thermaltake Water2.0 Pro CPU Cooler
G.Skill F3-14900CL10D-16GBXL RAM (2 x 8GB - I have two of these kits installed for a total of 32GB ram to run virtual machines)
Corsair 620W modular PSU
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Intel 520 SSD 240 GB for OS and Apps
Western Digital 1 TB 7200 RPM hard drive for data
ATI Radeon 4670 with 1 GB RAM (I am not a gamer)
Pioneer Blu-Ray burner
LG DVD burner
AFT Pro-35U USB 2.0 card reader
All of the above are installed in a Coolermaster Storm Scout case with 4 front USB 2.0 ports and a front eSATA port to which I have a 1TB external drive attached for backup and archival purposes. A 2TB external drive is attached to a rear USB 3.0 port. (I have yet to install the 3.5" two-port USB 3.0 bracket in a 5.25" bay in the Coolermaster case although I am planning to do so).
I have a 13TB unRAID NAS I built for long-term storage of photos, videos, ripped DVDs, blu-ray discs, documents, etc.
After running this system for a week, I have had zero issues.
Things I really like about this MB:
- BIOS/UEFI - I don't use the 3D BIOS gimmick - I use advanced mode and it has a ton of BIOS setting features
- board layout (everything was easy to get to even when mounted in my mid-tower case)
- lots (5 I believe) of onboard fan connectors
- 8 SATA ports (although I doubt I will use them all since I push most storage to my NAS)
- 1 eSATA port on rear panel - I still have external drives with eSATA interfaces which is much better than USB 2.0
- 3 onboard USB 3.0 headers + 2 USB 2.0 headers
- 2 NICS (one connected to my WiFi router - one connected to a test network)
- IEEE 1394a port on rear panel (I still have a few old miniDV tapes to capture and a lot of MB manufacturers are abandoning firewire in favor of USB 3.0)
- Easy overclocking when I am ready to do that (I tried it briefly and it was a breeze)
My board came with the latest available BIOS (F14). After I installed the board, it booted on the first attempt with no issues. I set up the BIOS and then installed Windows 7 on the SSD in AHCI mode. I did not use the drivers on the included CD. I had download all the latest chipset, USB, audio, NIC, etc. drivers from the Gigabyte website and had them ready to go on a USB stick. I installed these drivers after installing the OS and I have had zero driver issues. Everything is functioning as it should. All USB2, USB3, eSATA, firewire, NIC, audio and other ports/drivers are working 100%.
My monitor (an HP LP2475w 24" 1920x1200) has a built-in 4-port USB 2.0 hub and the board has no problems with it either.
I also have no issues waking the board from an S3 sleep with the keyboard or mouse. Maybe that is fixed in the F14 BIOS. I do not have to press the power button to wake from sleep as some have reported. Whatever the early issues were with this board, they seem to have been resolved, or, I just got lucky with a very good board.
I do understand that some people have had issues (especially early on) with BIOS and drivers or they have received a bad board (it happens, unfortunately). I am just happy that I have had no issues or failures and, so far, I have nothing remotely bad to say about this board. I will update this review if anything changes.
==== UPDATE December 23, 2012 =========
The board continues to function flawlessly, however, I thought I would add a word of caution concerning the USB 3.0 connectors on the motherboard. Of course, this applies to any motherboard with USB 3.0 connectors and not just this motherboard.
1 - The pins in the 3.0 motherboard connectors are very fragile. It is *very, very* easy to bend the pins inadvertently. On the upper USB 3.0 connector on this board, two pins bent so badly that they were touching and prevented the board from posting, it would power on and then power off almost immediately, I traced the problem to the bent pins which bent when I inserted the front panel USB 3.0 port connector cable into the MB socket. Even though the cable connector slid into the MB socket, these pins bent so badly that they were flat against the bottom of the connector. When I straightened them out, the MB posted fine, but, one of the pins broke off. This USB 3.0 socket is now useless. This seem to be a common complaint concerning USB 3.0 pins vs. the relatively much more robust pins of the USB 2.0 connectors. Be very careful when inserting anything into a USB 3.0 socket.
2 - The two USB 3.0 connectors at the bottom edge of the board are so close together that some cables (depending on the connector width) will not fit in the connector if a cable is in the adjacent connector. I had to use a hacksaw and saw off one side of the rubber cable jacket very close to the 20-pin socket so that cables could go in both connectors. Since I ruined the upper connector, I had to use both the lower connectors to support my front-panel USB 3.0 ports and USB 3.0 card reader.
System Profile
==============
Seasonic 850watt 80+ gold
Corsair 16 GB Vengence 1600
Intel 2600k @ 4.1 Ghz
Corsair Obsidian 800D
Mushkin 120GB SATA 3 SSD
Nvidia GTX250
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
===============
I've had this board up and running for about a week now to replace my good old faithful Core 2 Quad. Had it not been for my old motherboard failing I would still have been happy w/ the Core 2. Once the prices of Ivy Bridge come down I intend to upgrade and pass the 2600k along to the kiddies.
I was originally waiting for the release of Ivy Bridge but I saw a great deal on the 2600k so I decided to go with it. The install went well. High quality materials and great build quality. This is my first board w/ a graphical BIOS and it was ok to me. (kind of like dragging someone out of the DOS world into Windows 3.11). The BIOS felt a little clumsy to navigate through but I think that it was just me having to adjust coming from a text only BIOS.
Admittedly I don't have much patience anymore for researching proper vcore, multiplier, etc for overclocking and the stock speeds were just fine but the BIOS made it so simple to overclock that I opted to try for a mild 4.1 ghz OC. With ambient temp of 70f the CPU runs great at idle temp of 30c and after 30 minutes on prime95 63c.
Benchmarking my SSD using the Intel SATA controller and ATTO yielded a read/write of 550/515 MBs/s respectively. On a MSI z68 board with a 3rd party SATA 3 controller I was using for testing only yielded a 300/250 MBs/s read/write so I am defintiely pleased with the results of the Intel SATA controller on this board.
The only negative experience I've had w/ this board so far is that there was something on my network constantly waking the computer from sleep. I'm pretty sure it was something on the network because as soon as I disabled wake on lan the issue went away. I am not yet going to hold this against the board as I do not know if this is something that is my fault or some issue w/ the board.
If you are willing to give up a few USB 3.0 and SATA 3 ports, and have a slightly lesser quality audio processor, and a non intel LAN chip you can save $30 by going with the UD3H. (also a good board)
**IMPORTANT NOTE**
4/27/2012
Thanks to Sean's comment below I discovered that the default BIOS version F4 which shipped with my MB does not support 1600mhz memory speed with Sandy Bridge. If you want to use 1600 with SB then you must update the BIOS. For me version F6H worked just fine. I am not docking a star for that since by the time I discovered the problem there was already a fix for it.
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