Mens vi venter på at Intel officielt frigiver Z77 chipsettet, er der dukket en række previews op. Her er det af Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Z77 bundkortet.

With launch date of Intel’s new 3rd Generation processors getting closer and closer, as you will have seen, we have had a number of boards in for a first look at to see what various manufacturers have to offer and in particular Gigabyte. You may have already seen the other two boards that have been sent to us, namely the Z77M-D3H and the B75M-D3H and these cover the business and mATX sectors of the market. The Z77X-UD5H that are going to take a first look at here is more orientated towards the mainstream user and in particular overclockers and gamers. The X in the model name would say to us that this is an eXtreme board and the UD5 put it right towards the top of the line.

With this board, Gigabyte have introduced their latest 3D BIOS and 3D Power technologies and we also find their Ultra Durable 4 system protecting the board from high levels of humidity, electrostatic discharge, power failures and high temperatures. This is not where the feature end, we also have onboard mSATA, dual gigabit LAN, Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi MB2 audio, Intel Smart Response and VirtuMVP.

From what we have seen of Gigabyte’s top end boards in the past, it has a lot going for it and like all Z77 boards it will support both 2nd Generation Sandy Bridge and also the latest 3rd Generation CPUs that Intel have to offer, making it a great stepping stone for those looking to upgrade their system in the coming weeks and months.