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So I decided that for the reference review we'd use the Z77 from Intel themselves. Over the years their boards have gotten more and more impressive with good style. The DZ77GA-K70 motherboard is a nice looking motherboard really, completely passive, decent overclock functions (though not hardcore).

All our Core i7 tests in this review will be performed on this board, including the MHz overclock results.

Let's quickly run though the motherboard with some photos, it's too good not to show really. An all passive design, we see an 8-pin CPU power header, should be plenty enough for a decent overclock. Just below the heatsink is an array of phase and activity LEDs.

This is Socket LGA 1155 by the way. You'll spot 4 DIMM slots with up-to 64Gb memory support. Even 2400 MHz DDR3 memory in dual-channel is supported straight from the BIOS. Note that this Intel reference board even has onboard buttons and a diagnostic POST LED. Nice. The black SATA ports are SATA2, the blue SATA ports are Intel controlled SATA3 and the Grey ones are again SATA3, based on a Marvel chip though.

Underneath the heatsink with the skull the PCH chip can be found.

This board comes with two x16 slots, one x4 slot and one x1 PCIe slot. Then there are two PCI slots. Being Gen 3 PCI Express you could split the one x16 gen 3.0 link up into two x8 or one x8 with two x4 configuration. And remember, a x4 link at Gen 3.0 still offers the same bandwidth as a x8 link based on gen 2.0.

Ivy bridge also has an improved memory controller, allowing seriously fast memory. In this review we'll also be using a G.Skill Trident X DDR3 kit. Two DIMMs that clock in at a whopping 2666 MHz (!) by just enabling an XMP profile in the BIOS.