Gigabyte Z77X-D3H motherboard review

Product Showcase

The GA-Z77X-D3H is to be considered a mainstream product when a) you look at its price and B) compare it to the G1.Sniper 3 and Z77 Ultra Durable motherboards, but honestly this should not be confused with a low value option.

See the pricetag is only 125 EUR! For that money the D3H is still built to the Ultra Durable 3 standard, assuring high reliability at a low price point compared to other Z77 motherboards. Heck we even overclocked the processor close to 4.9 GHz with it (we'll demonstrate that later in the article).

The GA-Z77X-D3H also includes all of the standardized Z77 enhancements like mSATA, Lucid Virtu MVP, Quicksync, 3D BIOS; as well as support for 2-way SLI and Crossfire. The I/O panel of the GA-Z77X-D3H has a very luxurious six (!) SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports with another dual USB 2.0 ports. The motherboard  features three PCIe x16 Gen 3.0 expansion slots and three PCIe x1 slots. There is also one legacy PCI slot. A 7.1 VIA VT2021 audio codec is the source for audio, and we spot an Atheros 10/100/1000 fast Ethernet controller.

There is a single PS/2 combo port that can be used for either a keyboard or mouse, optical and coaxial SPDIF out ports, HDMI, 15pin D-Sub VGA. HDMI 1900 x 1200 output comes in as a stock feature. The GA-Z77X-D3H (rev. 1.0) supports a lot of Gigabyte proprietary software (such as On/Off Charge) while also being capable of running Intel's Rapid Start Technology or Lucidlogix' Virtu MVP.

The D3H will feature GIGABYTES new digital power delivery system, which leverage's four digital controllers for more control over CPU, Vtt, internal graphics and memory voltages in real time.
 

When we place the motherboard at an angle we see the socket LGA1155. It will support both Ivy Bridge as well as the current LGA1155 Sandy bridge processors. The board only has an 4-pin power header for the processor, thus less power phases and less extreme overclocking possibilities.

Aside from the Intel Z77 Express Chipset accommodating the LGA 1155 Core i3, i5, i7 and Celeron CPUs, the Gigabyte GA-Z77X-D3H can be loaded with a maximum of 32 GB DDR in 4 1.5V slots with Dual-channel architecture and is capable of running with Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) modules, as well.