 Welcome to my unboxing of the Asus P8Z77V Premium. Now of note is the fact that Asus actually doesn't even always release a premium grade motherboard. They always have a Pro, they always have a vanilla, you know sometimes they'll have LE's or LX or whatever else mixed in. They always have a Deluxe, but they don't always have a Premium because Asus only releases a Premium board when they feel that there is some kind of a feature set mix that they can bring to the table that justifies the Premium moniker. So in this case, before we get any further into it, what makes this one super special and super premium above all else is full native support for Thunderbolt. So Thunderbolt is built right into the boards. Thunderbolt gives you up to 10 gigabit per second which is fully capable of running external storage as well as displays, even daisy chain together at the same time. Moving along, we've got an M-SATA 32 gig SSD built in so that's as a caching solution for whatever hard drive you might actually connect to it. We've also got full support for their WiFi Go technology including Bluetooth as well as the ability to use your board as a WiFi access point. Fan Expert 2 is included, this is actually a fantastic little piece of software within the AI suite that lets you manage your fan speeds and temperatures along custom curves should you see fit. To give you guys some idea how important of a feature I think that is, I bought an over $100 piece of hardware called an M-Cube T-Balancer to use in my system just to give me that functionality. It comes built into your board here. Smart Digi Plus, so for better overclocking, yes this is definitely an overclocking optimized board. We've also got their EPU and TPU, so EPU is a one button way to undervolt and save power with your system, whereas TPU has a couple of different options, you can either do it with the one button option or you can have it tune itself to overclock your system and get better performance. We have full support for Nvidia SLI, AMD Crossfire X, Virtue MVP which improves your performance as well as offers GPU virtualization which allows you to use Intel Quick Sync which is a quick way of transcoding video even though you have a dedicated graphics card installed. DTS, DTS Connect, Intel Z77 chipset, supports Intel Core processors are better, 22 and 32 nanometer CPU support, so that's second and third generation Intel Core series processors. And here we go, we find a whole lot of pretty much the same basic stuff inside here. It does talk a little bit more about FanExpert 2 including your abilities to take a quick advance control with detailed information about each fan, you can listen and locate the fans, you can get to blah blah, okay, this is all good stuff. This is what I'm all about, oh no not this one, not the RPM fix mode, that's cool, so you can take all of your fans and fix them at a given RPM which is kind of neat, this is the one that I'm all about, the one where you can create whatever curves you want and according to temperatures of various parts you lock in each fan to whatever you want it to adjust based on, you can get your system to keep itself at exactly the cooling and noise level that you're comfortable with. Ah, SSD caching 2, so this is cool. So SSD caching 2 now has a multiple caching option so you have four, four SSD caching capable ports which means you can do all kinds of cool stuff including having two separate cached volumes, so two SSDs and two hard drives and you can tune exactly the way you want to do it, you can have one SSD that's caching like a volume of the other three drives so that gives you more flexibility because in the past we've only really seen caching solutions that work, or third party caching solutions that work with only two ports. Okay, Virtua MVP, we've talked about USB 3 boost, this is important, so UASP as well as their turbo mood, turbo mood, turbo mood, that's like when you're like depressed but like really really really fast. Anyway, turbo mode, sorry guys, turbo mode and UASP give you options to accelerate your USB 3 performance, we have a full NCIX tech tips coming out about this soon. Network iControl uses the Intel Nix built into this board, it actually has dual built in Intel network cards to manage things like QoS for more optimized network performance. Thunderbolt, okay, up to daisy chain, up to six Thunderbolt devices, ASUS also put a lot of engineering into making sure that it would be hot pluggable because by nature PCI Express is not a hot pluggable interface so they had to do some special tuning to the BIOS as well as the driver in order to make this possible on the PC. Okay, yes, we've covered that already, we've covered that already, so easy installation for Intel smart response and rapid start technology, very very cool. Wi-Fi Go is another really neat feature that we sort of already talked about, okay, so that's good. Oh yeah, of note to do with Wi-Fi Go is that it is DLNA compatible so you can use DLNA devices to access stuff that you have on your computer from your compatible media player such as one from Pivos or Patriot or another or ASUS with their own Oplay players as well so that will be over the network. So inside the accessory package we find a whole lot of really good stuff, I'm just going to take all these out and then we'll have a look at outside of the box. This has a really big box, you can tell that it's a higher end board because the box is substantially larger than their Pro Series board. Here I'm going to go get the Pro Series board box so that you guys can see the physical comparison. So that's how you know you're getting like more like different and more better stuff. See, check this out, premium box compared to Pro box. See, look at that thickness, yeah, that's a premium board. So why did they need all of that space? Well, because there's tons of cool stuff in here. Here's the WiFi Go module with WiFi N and Bluetooth. Here are the antennas, these are magnetic antennas which are super handy, it means you can stick them to the outside of your case. So those are for the WiFi Go module. Here are the exclusive features user guide walkthroughs. We also have the WiFi Go card specific user guide for that guy right there. We've got the P8Z77V premium user guide including the installation DVD which you should ignore and download latest off the ASUS website. Check this out, this is all English so this is a thick, thick user manual for your motherboard which is great because detail is better than not having detail. We have two-way, three-way and four-way Republic of Gamers, check that out, you even get like a Republic of Gamers SLI bridge to go with your not Republic of Gamers board but I mean with these kinds of features it almost is pretty close to that level. We've also got four SATA 3, 6 gigabit per second cables, two SATA 2, 3 gigabit per second cables, an I.O. shield with a few interesting color codes. So they've got the USB BIOS flashback port color coded and then the button color coded for you as well as your USB 3 ports that are compatible with UASP. So they've gone ahead and labeled that for you. You can configure them in the AI suite whether you want to use UASP or whether you want to use BOT or standard mode but the fact that they color code them for you means you can more easily figure out which ones are going where because these ones that aren't UASP ready you can also use turbo mode on those. So I also like the positioning of these up at the top because if you do have to reach around the back or if you do have a case that has a pass through, having it at the top is usually the closest and most convenient place. ASUS Q connectors are right here for more convenient plugging in of front panel whatnots and who-has and last but not least we've got an ASUS USB 3 front panel 3.5 inch bay. Since nobody has a floppy drive anymore this is a far more useful thing to put in your 3.5 inch bay than whatever else you were planning to put in your 3.5 inch bay. So thanks to ASUS for including that and it uses an internal header not an external pass through which is definitely ideal. Alright moving along to the board itself. This is yeah I mean I was going to say it's a premium board but if you haven't figured that out based on the name of the board already then you're probably pretty noob so we're just going to leave it at that. I mean even the fact that I felt the need to say it's a premium board is pretty noob right there. By the way a lot of people complain about how I touch PCBs let me show you how I'm actually removing the motherboard. So this is the grip I have on it which might look pretty bad on the surface but let me show you what I'm doing. One thumb is on plastic components here. My fingers on the back are actually on the metal spikes coming out of the RAM slots on the other side of the board. I'm not touching the PCB. Touching the edge of a PCB once again is fine. So if you watch when I hold a board like this I'm positioning my hand like this so once again I have my fingers on those metal spikes I'm not touching the PCB. The oil from your fingers can damage PCBs and is not very good for them so yes I'm aware of that. No I don't have my greasy fingers all over the PCB. I like to maneuver boards by slots, heatsinks and parts where I don't actually have to touch it. I also avoid touching things like this because your fingerprints will get on them and they'll look ugly and greasy because they're made of aluminum and aluminum tends to stain when you get fingerprint oil on aluminum. Yes not good. I hate fingerprints so that is what I am doing. I'm not just willy nilly touching the board all over the place. So let's have a look at the general layout of the board. Right up here in the top left corner I'm going to start there for a change because it's a bit of an exceptional feature of this board. That is where the WiFi Go module plugs in. You just put that in there. There's a space for it in the back of the IO shield right there. That's where you plug in your antennas. So that's pretty straightforward. There's a screw that is pre-plugged into the WiFi Go card so it doesn't get lost. Go ahead screw that in. No big deal. The socket. So this has an LGA 1155 socket which means you can't use 1156 processors. It's fully compatible with Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge so you can use whatever CPU you want and overclock the snot out of it with the huge multi-phase digital VRM that this premium level board has going on over here. It also has fairly beefy cooling with your chipset cooled by just a little guy here. We got a heat pipe connecting it to a much larger heat sink that is responsible for cooling part of the VRM with another large heat sink cooling the rest of it. Honestly, these Ivy Bridge CPUs with their 77 watt TDPs don't really start to suck back power and produce a lot of heat until you overclock them. So that's how you can tell when a board is designed with overclocking in mind because it'll have all that space and all that cooling going on for overclocking. So we've got a lot of logos on the board. Oh, you know what? I'll do my usual routine and then we'll go into some of the other more detailed stuff. So right here is our 8-pin power connector and its ideal location at the top left of the board. Here are our dual channel DDR3 slots. So all Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge CPUs support only four slots. That's why you don't see any 1155 boards that support more than four slots of memory. Although technically all Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge CPUs only support up to 2x8x configurations for the PCIe slots. But Asus has clearly cheated on that a little bit so we'll talk more about that later. Moving along, here's your TPM plug. Here's your 24-pin power connector and its ideal location along the right-hand edge. One front USB 3 connector is located here. This is going to be running off of the Intel chipset. So that is according to Intel spec. You must have at least two available front panel Intel USB 3 headers or USB 3 connectors. Okay, here's a SATA 3. Okay, SATA 3G port for whatever reason. I'm guessing that's probably the same one that's the same controller that's wired into something on the back panel or something. I don't know why that. Oh, I know why that's there. Okay, give me a sec guys. Alright not so complicated as all of that guys. This is a SATA, this is just a regular run-of-the-mill Intel SATA 2 3 gigabit per second port. These are your Intel SATA 3 6 gigabit per second ports. This is another couple Intel SATA 2 3 gigabit per second ports and this one is running off your fourth SATA 2 3 gigabit per second port on the Intel controller. So that's an M SATA configuration right there. So it is power and data to an M SATA drive, which by the way, you can swap for something bigger should you so desire. However SRT technology only supports up to 64 gigs on a single drive anyway, or is it 60 gigs or something in that neighborhood. So 32 gigs is plenty for some storage drive that you plug in in order to make sure that whatever games you play most frequently or whatever else is going to be cached and ready to rock whenever you want. So these guys are special though. So I okay I was a little bit I was a little bit unclear before but I've done I've read my notes on this board. So it's mostly optimized for using two caching SSDs and two storage drives. Now while the controller itself may be capable in the future of something like a RAID 5 with an SSD cache or something like that RAID 5 on a consumer level integrated chipsets is not really the most ideal thing in the world because it doesn't give you the option to recover it in the event of a hardware failure or anything like that unless you happen to have an identical board or identical chipset handy. So it's not really ideal but using them as a cache is definitely like recommended thumbs up kind of configuration. So these are Marvel controllers. These are Intel controllers. All right moving right along front panel connectors USB 2.0 front panel headers. There's your clear CMOS button. Is there another one on the back of the board? No no clear CMOS on the back of the board. That's kind of interesting but there's one here so it's not the end. Oh I forgot the memo K button. So if you're using high speed memory which is far more of a factor now on Ivy Bridge platforms where we're seeing up to three gigahertz memory kits being released you want to make sure if you plug those in you can use the if it doesn't post you can use the memo K button to run it out to force the board and the memory at a super safe setting so that you can post configure all your voltages and settings correctly and then reboot. Okay here's your post diagnostic LED readout which by the way not all boards have this but Asus has taken the liberty of including a comprehensive list. Oh yeah this is another thing they do on their higher end boards you see a much more comprehensive validated memory section. Okay comprehensive list of all of the error codes that you might see off that so how many times have you guys had a board that has one of these error readouts and then actually doesn't sorry guys the battery died but what I was I don't want to harp on it for too long but how many times have you guys had a board that has one of these but you Google around and to no avail can you even find out what the stupid postcode on it even means. So there you go they tell you what it means thank you Asus. It's basic stuff like that that really sets apart the products that are good from the ones that sort of are trying to be good. TPU and EPU buttons are right here hardware built-in power and reset switches are here there's your front panel audio as well as your spit if out and that pretty much covers it for the layout of the board however we got to talk a little bit about these PCIe slots first though let's have a look at the fan header so what good is a bunch of really cool software features to do with your fan configuration if you don't have lots of PWM fan headers one two three four five and I believe I saw six six PWM fan headers are built into this board and they're all 100% configurable. This is cool stuff this is the bee's knees because this is compatibility with up to and these are PCIe gen 3 those LEDs show you which ones are active in gen 3 mode and that is a very expensive chip right there so this board supports up to 8x 8x 8x 8x PCIe 3 now even in the event of because remember these two these CPUs only technically support 8x 8x but that PLX switching chip allows it to achieve better balance basically it's a switch so it manages where the data needs to go to to give you effectively more bandwidth for running more graphics cards not only that but unlike the last generation less expensive PCIe 2.0 PLX chip this will run even in a worst case scenario like if you were going to go oh well you know blah blah blah I'm a naysayer of PLX chips and I think that if you've only got 16x PCIe 3 effective bandwidth here then you can only have 4x 4x 4x 4x even if you only had PCIe 3 4x 4x 4x 4x that would still be equivalent to PCIe 2.0 8x 8x 8x 8x 8x which is more than enough for four of any high-end graphics card today so even worst case scenario this thing is going to be fully unleashed fully functional for four-way SLI and four-way crossfire with four high-end graphics cards which is very cool they also throw in a couple PCIe 1x slots just in case you need them and remember guys if you want to run at a two-card configuration you're gonna go here and here they're conveniently color-coded four-way configurations will go here here here and here and three-way will be one two three don't forget guys you can also plug in PCIe 1x cards into 16x slots or 2x or 4x or 8x into a 16x slot no problem other than it'll have less bandwidth available which won't matter unless you're running like really high-end raid cards or anything like that okay moving right along aha okay so back port two eSATA ports one two three four USB 3.0 ports optical audio out okay two USB 2.0 ports presumably under this sticker which I think was actually supposed to be up here but whatever there's two USB 2.0 ports under there trust me there ha I can reapply stickers Asus can hire me to work as applying a sticker applyer okay USB 2 two Intel gigabit Ethernet ports can't emphasize that enough dual Intel gigabit LAN 7.1 audio we've got HDMI and DisplayPort out for the onboard video built into your Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge processor and right there last but not least Thunderbolt so besides all the BIOS tuning and software hoo-ha that Asus has to go through to get a solution like this working they also had a very special approach that they took to the traces as well as the location of the Thunderbolt chip on the board itself so you see those curved traces as opposed to here let's find a more traditional trace ha over here I hope you guys can see this in the lighting but can you see how these traces go at 45 degree angles right here and they're kind of sharp angles these ones use a curve shape that Asus found was better for the transmission of data at very very high speeds and the physical proximity of the Thunderbolt chip to the Thunderbolt port is also conducive to allowing it to have better well data integrity between these two points here not only that but Asus also hasn't taken any of these traces and routed them through the different layers of the boards this also once again reduces interference and increases data integrity so as far as solutions go for modern generation products this is as good as it gets guys where they've taken everything that they know about designing motherboards and their Asus just saying and put it here to make this Thunderbolt solution as fast and reliable and pain free as possible so guys we're going to have lots of Thunderbolt stuff coming on NCIX Tech Tips over the next little bit we've got cool stuff like this which is Thunderbolt ready we've got cool stuff like thank you slick this which is also Thunderbolt ready and don't forget guys Thunderbolt looks the same as the mini display port but it's not it is capable of carrying mini display port or carrying display port signals but you need a specific Thunderbolt cable in order to run Thunderbolt because it actually has processors at either end of the cable in addition to the processors on the devices in order to make the 10 gigabit per second throughput a possibility remember guys Thunderbolt will also continue to scale so we are going to take these storage devices and this monitor and we're going to show you guys what Thunderbolt is all about in terms of cabling convenience and no fuss no mass it's great on the desktop great for notebooks and I think that pretty much covers it ah USB BIOS flash back don't forget about that great feature you don't even have to have CPU or memory installed you just throw a USB stick into this port right here press the button and it'll flash that BIOS to the board making it so that even if new CPUs come out or whatever else your BIOS isn't compatible no big deal you can get that taken care of no problem and don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos oh yeah and the sexy matte black PCB oh so nice