 Welcome to my unboxing of the Asus Sabertooth Z77 motherboard. This is what I would consider to be a true successor to the Sabertooth P67 because it brings back the thermal armor. The exclusive thermal armor covers the entire board with dual turbo fans directing cool air to critical parts and dissipating heat faster for better stability. TUF series motherboards better be stable and they better have high quality components because they come with a 5 year warranty. These are the only Asus motherboards that do come with a 5 year warranty and they have a number of features to back it up. So first of all we've got thermal armor, we'll show you that in a moment. Thermal radar, this is really cool. If you check out on my NCIXcom channel I've got a video where I talk about the Asus specific features of their Z77 boards where I show you thermal radar. It's really really cool. Dust defender, repel the dust, expand the lifespan. I'll show you those in just a minute. You can cover your slots when you are not using them. TUF components certified by military standard. So there you go. You're going to give a 5 year warranty on something you better make sure you're using proper components that are going to last a long time. New DigiPlus power control, so this is 8th generation digital power control from Asus meaning you are controlling the RAM, the CPU and the integrated GPU. USB BIOS flash back allows you to easily recover your BIOS in the event of a failure even without a CPU and RAM installed. Network eye control allows you to prioritize various applications through AI sweep in order to make sure that your, you know, your Torrent that's running in the background is not affecting your pings in your game server. UEFI BIOS, we take that for granted these days. USB 3 boost is also available whether it's just the regular boost mode or UASP with compatible devices on the AS media controller. USB charger plus allows you to charge up to 3 times faster. ESD guards, in theory, protect the board from electrostatic discharge. AI sweep 2 is their software that allows you to control this stuff. And finally, complete USB 3. Whatever they mean by complete USB 3, I'm not quite sure. I think they mean they have a front panel header and rear panel ports. They also have both Intel and third party chipsets supported on this particular board because the Z77 chipset does include Intel USB 3 ports. However, the Intel USB 3 ports don't support UASP at this time so you're going to want to use the AS media controller if you want to get the best performance possible. So this platform is using the Z77 chipset which means you got support for 22 or 32 nanometer GPUs. That is second generation or third generation, Ivy Bridge, Intel Core i3, i5, and i7 processors. We've also got support for Intel Smart Response Technology which means that you can use an SSD to cache your boot drive. NVIDIA SLI and AMD Crossfire X technology are supported. Virtue MVP gives you the ability to plug in a dedicated graphics card, still make use of Quick Sync technology which is the integrated GPU's quick video encoding, as well as use the integrated GPU as a way to augment the performance of your dedicated GPU, as a way to reduce the tearing that is caused by frame rates that are above the refresh rate of your monitor, and finally with the newer Virtue, you don't have to worry about whether you plug into the dedicated graphics card or the integrated graphics card. You can switch to iMode or dMode, whichever you prefer. Okay, now let's do accessories really quick here. I've actually opened some of these already guys because I did already use this motherboard to film my other video and Slick in his infinite wisdom opened up the board before we prepped the other video and before we had a chance to unbox it. So he's feeling the shame right now. Alright, so we've got some pieces here that we took off the board in order to install these fans. So there's a fan right here on the chipset blowing air down in order to direct air exactly where it needs to go. So through the chipset fins, across any of the other chips that are installed on the board itself, and you know eventually sort of out the gaps around it. There's also a fan here. So this I would probably suggest using it as an exhaust instead of as an intake, but I guess the choice is yours. Slick installed this one. And then next we've got our dust covers. So this one, this one. These basically allow you to keep dust from accumulating in slots that you're not using. ASUS has included a full complement of them for the PCI Express slots as well as look at these. These are cool. So we've got other placeholders for the RAM slots that we're not using. So you don't look they can go either way. They've got slots so you don't have to worry about which way you install them. See, I can go in that way and go in that way. There you go. So your board will look like really sweet even if you have absolutely nothing installed on it. So if you're into aesthetics, which I happen to be, that is cool. All right, IO shield including cutout for the fan at the back so that you're going to get adequate ventilation. We've also got four SATA cables. Two of them are SATA 3, two of them are SATA 2, but it doesn't actually matter. They're both single to right angle or all four of them are single to right angle. SLI connector right there. Two connectors for your front USB as well as your front panel headers for your power and whatnot. You've got a driver and utilities DVD. You don't use that. Download the latest from the ASUS website. You've also got a certificate of reliability. It's gold. And TUF Series 5 year warranty notice. That's the one I'm concerned about, not this one so much because that means ASUS is going to stand behind it. You've also got a sticker that you can put on your case, TUF inside. Oh, sorry. Can you see that? There we go. Cool. Moving on, let's have a look at the layout of the board, which is quite tricky because it's completely covered with the thermal armor, which you can take off should you see fit. So we've got our CPU socket right here, LGA 1155 supporting the latest Intel processors. We've also got our 8-pin power connector in its ideal location at the top left of the board. We've got our 24-pin power connector in its ideal location on the right-hand edge. There's the Memo K button. That means even if you're using a high-performance DIMMs, you can use that button to ensure that it will post no matter what. We've got a front USB 3.0 header. Very good orientation of this. Love it. Good job, ASUS. Thumbs up because this will run more easily to your front panel and will require less kinking of the cable and you don't want something coming out like this. If you're buying this board, you probably care about the look of your build. This will help. Next, we've got four SATA 2 3-gigabit per second ports, two SATA 3 6-gigabit per second ports, and two more SATA 3 6-gigabit per second ports running off of a third-party chipset. So those guys are... Just a sec. Here's our front panel headers for your power and reset and all that good stuff. Three USB 2.0 front panel connectors. Moving on, we've got a power LED. We've got clear CMOS jumper. Prefer to see a switch, especially on a gaming-oriented board, but it is what it is. We've got our Thunderbolt header. Yes. So you can install an optional ASUS accessory into this slot and then plug that into the Thunderbolt header and you will add Thunderbolt support to your board. Debug port as well as front panel audio are both right here. And moving along, we've got the PCI Express slot layout. So we've got one, two, three PCIe 1x slots, three PCIe 16x slots, although it's going to run at 16x or 8x, 8x, and I really wouldn't recommend running a graphics card in here. This is more intended for accessories, you know, LAN card, RAID card, Thunderbolt card, whatever else the case may be. Moving along to the back, we've got our usual assortment of ports. So four USB 2.0 ports, the BIOS flashback button, so handy, so useful. Two eSATA ports, four USB 3.0 ports, two of those running off of a third-party chipset and two of them running off of an Intel chipset, display port and HDMI, video out, optical audio out, as well as 7.1 audio. Now I want to show you guys where all of the fan headers are because you can use the AI Suite software in order to configure custom fan curves. One, two, three, four, five, and six. Asus has done a fantastic job of putting all of the relevant ports around the very outside of the edge of this board in order to keep a clean aesthetic. That is not easy. So they have done a tremendous amount of work in order to make things convenient for you, so I hope you guys appreciate it. Here's another cool thing. Check this out. Ventilation holes in the board. I call them bullet holes, but I don't think that's actually Asus' intention, but check this out. So we've got like random ventilation holes in the board. I think these ones are for the socket itself, but yeah, there's like some ventilation holes and whatnot. Pretty cool, right? Perforated PCB. That's like the latest technology. I'm not even joking. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Sabertooth Z77. This looks laughing. He's making me lose it. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. Miss something? PCI Express 3.0 is supported on this motherboard as long as you are using a CPU that has a built-in PCI Express 3.0 controller.