 Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Gigabyte Z77X UP5TH. This is one of the first boards with the all-new Ultra Durable 5, which is ultra cool, ultra efficient, ultra performance, and finally, ultra current ca- high current capability? Should be ultra current capability because, check this out, they're using an all-new power delivery system that is basically as expensive to implement on a motherboard as, like, building another low-cost motherboard and, like, giving it to you at the same time as you buy this motherboard. It is extremely expensive on Gigabyte's side, but it is unprecedented in terms of the power delivery that it can achieve. There's no coil line. It runs cooler, which should achieve better overclocking because having those hot VRMs all, you know, up in your CPU's socket area is not helping things stay cooler on more traditional power delivery systems. So let's go through some of the other stuff. You've got support for all the latest Intel Core i3, i5, and i7 processors. They're UEFI 3D BIOS as well as their 3D Power, which is all digital power for the CPU, the memory, as well as the, um, the UnCore. This board supports Thunderbolt, so we'll talk more about that later, and it comes with a 300 megabit per second dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 card. Because it is ultra durable in general, it has their 2x copper PCB as well as their glass fabric PCB, which offers humidity protection if you live somewhere very humid, such as in Southeast Asia, for example, where, you know, just general humidity in the air can eventually cause problems for some computer components. So here we can see what Gigabyte has to say about their single package design with their industry-leading 60 amp rated power stage, which is a phenomenal amount of power to be able to deliver to a CPU. I mean, you might even go as far as to say totally unnecessary, but if you want to get the best over clocks, every little bit helps. So traditional MOSFETs are hot, lower RDS on MOSFETs are cooler, and their new power stage MOSFETs are the coolest. So this is all taken with thermal imaging configuration. Okay, overclocking stability, okay, good, and excellent. So if you overheat, ah, yes, this is interesting. So if the power delivery system runs cooler, it actually also runs more efficiently and more stably. So that's just a general function, the fact that it can deliver more power stably of the fact that it does run cooler. Dual UA5 BIOS means that even if you have some kind of a failure while you're flashing the BIOS, you can recover it quite easily using their utility. You've also got power failure protection, so they build this into the board itself so that even if there's some kind of a problem with a short, they have fuses built in that will potentially protect the parts. Dual Thunderbolt is built in with dual 10 gigabit per second capability. So if you want to plug in like, you know, a dozen Thunderbolt devices, daisy chained all over the place and have 20 gigabit per second data to the whole thing, then you can go ahead and do that. Sound Blaster X5 is built in. And that pretty much does it for the box. Let's open this bad boy up. And I just love Gigabyte's styling these days. I mean, honestly, some of their some of their G1 series stuff doesn't really do it for me with like guns and whatnot on it. But they're they're they're they're just they're UD series boards are just. Oh, they're just like, look at this. Mat black PCB, every possible feature without overdoing it on the PCB side. So this is a standard ATX configuration. They also have built in the full seven slots of expansion, in spite of all the extra functionality that's on this particular board. Let's start unpacking some of the accessories here so you guys can have a look at them. Great accessory package, including that fabulous Gigabyte sticker. Flexible black SLI bridge, the very best kind. Clean IO shield with color coding on the appropriate parts. USB cable probably for something. I think it's for this guy, actually. All right. Go ahead and open this up. And then we are ready to go through it. So we've also got a user's manual with driver disk for a variety of things. Just download the latest off the Gigabyte website, as well as a user's manual for what is presumably the wireless card setting up the software and a multilingual installation guidebook that you probably won't need if you watch the Linus tech or rather NCI tech tips video on how to how to build your new PC. So, yeah, that's USB right there. So that can plug into any one of the PCI-E 1x slots. And here's something cool about Gigabyte's implementation of their Wi-Fi Bluetooth module. This is just a Wi-Fi Bluetooth module. I've seen ASUS do this before, where they include some kind of a module that fits on the board, but they actually put all the logic on the board itself so that you can't just take the card as an extra value add and install it in one of the other PCs if you want. So kudos to Gigabyte for giving users the flexibility to, you know, maybe in five years when they're not using this board anymore to still have, you know, a Wi-Fi Bluetooth module that they can continue to use. Also, nice finishing touches, black PCB, even on the add-in card. So many times I've seen, you know, like a gorgeous looking board like this and they include like an ugly brown SLI bridge or they include like a little add-in card that's got like a green or brown PCB on it. No, not Gigabyte. They are not about that these days. Six SATA 3 6 gigabit connect, 6 gigabit per second cables. You've got a front USB 3.0, 3.5 inch bay device. So if your case doesn't support front USB 3, then you'll have it. I think I covered pretty much all this stuff. Antennas. So those are the dual antennas for your dual band Wi-Fi. And now let's get along to the board itself. So this thing has everything. There are those premium power phases that are just baller as heck because, yeah, I'm totally, I'm totally down for those. There's your CPU socket. So again, you know, all the latest processors. If you want to overclock, make sure you get a K series processor because those are the ones that are going to allow you to crank up the voltage, crank up the multiplier and really get the best results. Anything on K series. This board is probably going to be wasted on it. Your 8 pin power connectors and its ideal location in the top left of the board. And you've got your full support for the usual up to 32 gigs. So 4 by 8 gig dual channel memory. Your onboard switches are all up here. Perfect. This is, this is perfect. So the CMOS clear reset and power. And instead of having them down here where as soon as you load a couple of graphics cards into it, you can't really reach them. This is the ideal location for an open test bench. All your voltage checkpoints are right here. So you can use a multimeter in order to check any one of these different things, including your V-Core as well as your integrated memory controller, all that good stuff, your memory. Moving down to along the right hand edge, you got your 24 pin connector in its ideal location. Post LED again, this is a much better location than down here because you can actually see it. Check this out, you guys. Three, one, two, three front panel USB three headers. That is absolutely outstanding. I don't think I've seen that before. Auxiliary SATA power connector. So this do not plug this out to a drive. That is not how this works. This is auxiliary power for your PCI Express slot. So you plug SATA power into this. Two SATA three, six gigabit per second ports. Four SATA two, three gigabit per second ports all in a right angle in their ideal locations. You've got an additional SATA port. So this is SATA three, six gigabit per second. And that's probably the same chipset that's powering the eSATA on the back of the board. PCI Express slot layout is pretty good actually. So you've got your 1X, you can throw your Wi-Fi module in there. Your dual slot card will then cover that, which will leave you with a 1X slot, an 8X electrical slot, a PCI slot just in case you still got something legacy you want to use, as well as a PCIe 4X slot. So these are physical 16, but they're wired for either 16, 8.8, or 8.8.4. And this 4 is running off the chipset. So it's a little bit slower, not ideal for SLI or crossfire configuration. For all intents and purposes, this is a two-way SLI and two-way crossfire board. Although three-way crossfire is supported. Front panel connectors are here, as well as there's your high-power USB 2 front panel header. Your normal USB 2 front panel header, remember this one is better for charging things like iPads or other tablets. Trusted platform module, front panel firewire, front audio, and then here is all of your onboard audio, all of your onboard audio stuff. This, this is cool. So this M-SATA port, actually maybe that's what that, I don't know what that's doing. That probably powers down one of these SATA ports. So yeah, port five. Port five turns off if you populate this. So you can use this for things like smart response technology or even just as a regular SSD. It's totally up to the individual end user. So where's our Thunderbolt chipset? Oh yeah, there we go. Right there. So there's your Thunderbolt chipset, close to the Thunderbolt ports. As you'd expect, remember guys, Thunderbolt won't work unless you're using the Intel onboard audio. So that means you can either use Lucid Virtue MVP, which allows you to use the onboard audio for what it's good at, which is things like video transcoding and making sure you're using Thunderbolt. And then you can use your dedicated video to power any kind of 3D games, even if you're running the display off of the Thunderbolt port. In terms of I.O., you've got lots of different onboard display options, so VGA, DVI, HDMI. And remember, these Thunderbolt ports can also terminate to mini display ports. So that's effectively all the major players. Four USB 3.0 ports, which gives you a total of 10. Ten USB 3.0 ports potentially can run off this board. Two USB 2.0 ports, which are great for legacy devices, like if you need to use a bootable USB or something like that. It tends to have slightly better compatibility. Same thing with light keyboards and mice. So I'm glad they're still including those. Gigabit ethernet, as well as optical audio out and 7.1 audio out. The back of the board is pretty much what you'd expect. So you got a couple of cooling heat sinks here, as well as your back plate, and using all screws, all hard mounts for all of the front components of the board. So thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at Gigabyte's GA-Z77X UP5TH. This has a few firsts, including its dual Thunderbolt ports. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.