 Welcome to my unboxing and first look at a product that is actually very exciting. Now the whole performance micro ATX motherboard thing, I guess I'd have to say was really started by EVGA back in the socket 939 days. So they had their SLI motherboard which was using, shoot what chipset was that? Wow it fails me at this point but whatever. So they had a truly performance oriented micro ATX motherboard which was later, sort of the concept of which was later copied by DFI and then Asus got on board with their Gene series of motherboards and now finally Gigabyte has a truly legitimate high end MATX board. So this has all the usual features so we'll start with what they got on the front here. So this is a Z77 board which means we do have support for Virtue MVP, third generation Intel core series processors, i3s, i5s and i7s including support for PCI Express 3.0. It is SLI and Crossfire X ready meaning if you're running a 7970 which I happen to have one of over there or a GTX 680 which I happen to have one of over there. Those are PCI Express 3.0 ready graphics cards that will run in SLI and Crossfire with double the usual bandwidth so PCIe 3, 8X and 8X will be equivalent to PCIe 2.0, 16X, 16X. We've also got their patent pending 3D power as well as 3D BIOS so that's their dual UEFI BIOSes so that's two independent chips and then their 3D power is their all digital power delivery system that they're using on this board. What else we got here? Super speed so we're using Intel Gigabit Ethernet. We have SATA 3, USB 3 and 3X power. This has been a popular marketing scheme for Gigabyte since they introduced it and I think it's awesome because yeah it means you got all the highest speed interfaces and the 3x power thing is cool because it means that you can deliver up to 3x the amount of power through a single port as you can with a standard port which allows you to run more devices off of a single port which is cool. Okay, Super hearing, Creative Sound Core 3D so they do have a dedicated section of the PCB for their headphone amplified sound. What else we got here? Super shield so four smart fan connectors, multiple GPU support, Lucid Virtue MVP. So Virtue MVP is the upgraded version of Lucid Virtue that comes with the Z77 platform so you've got your virtual v-sync as well as some performance improvements and less of a performance hit when using Virtue versus just using a dedicated graphics card compared to previous generation products. Alright, we got the poster I showed you. Here's some stickers that I guess you might think are cool. Here's a user's manual as well as an installation DVD which you can not use and download the latest off the Gigabyte website as well as finally a multilingual installation guidebook. We've got six SATA cables, three right angle and three straight. We have a black flexible SLI cable, the very best kind and we have an I.O. shield with everything conveniently labeled. Next we have the motherboard itself. Gigabyte has done a fantastic, seriously like the old Gigabyte is just out of sight, out of mind for me at this point because the new Gigabyte which seems to be all about wicked awesome color schemes, great aesthetics as well as their stable high quality design is just yeah way very much improved and I love it. So check out this board. It looks fantastic. We've got a stylish looking heat sink, no guns, no bullets, just a sleek overall look. Four pin power connector up here. Now some people have in our assembly department actually commented on the four pin power connector in spite of this being a performance board to which I said come on guys, the platform, the highest TDP CPU on it is a 95 watt TDP CPU. We're not talking you know high power consumption here and I thought it was silly back when we were putting dual 8 pins on 1155 boards anyway. A four pin is going to be just fine. Don't worry about it. All right so there is your digital power delivery, your four pin power as well as your four DIMM supporting dual channel memory. So remember guys with Z77 as well as third generation core series processors we do find it easier to overclock the memory and get high frequencies out of your memory. So if you wanted to invest in a higher end memory kit I guess now is as good a time as any. Your 24 pin connectors in its ideal location along the right hand edge and your front USB 3.0 header is right about here. Remember guys this is running off the dedicated Intel USB 3 that is built in to the Intel chipset. These are no longer running off of third party chipsets. Here we have two SATA 3 6 gigabit per second ports running off the Intel chipset as well as three SATA 2 3 gigabit per second ports also running off the Intel chipset. The sixth one running off the chipset is right there on the back panel and yeah okay. We'll cover the fan headers later. Here's your front panel connectors as well as your increased power front USB 2 header so you want to plug that into your front USB 2 as opposed to the other ones here because it'll allow you to quickly charge even a high draw device such as an iPad. Here are two regular USB 2 front panel headers as well as the trusted platform module and front panel audio. You can see the dedicated section of the PCB is right over here which is good. Okay PCI Express slot layout. So this is a 16x slot. This is an... You've got to be kidding me really? Oh that's a very strange layout. Okay. Well this is a PCIe 16x slot that is only wired for 4x so this is going to be the one that is not preferable to use especially if you aren't running a third generation processor. This one is wired for 8x. So if you're running Crossfire or SLI these two are going to give you the ideal bandwidth split. This guy's running at PCIe 1x. I never actually covered the socket so whether you're running Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge or even... Yeah, Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge this will have full support including the onboard GPU which brings us around to the back of the board where we've got one, two, three, four USB 2.0 ports. A PS2 port. I still do like to see this. VGA. DVI. VGA port as well as HDMI output. So you have the full range of outputs. Remember the IGP on the third generation core processors actually supports three monitors out which is very, very cool. E-SATA. Two more USB 3.0 ports provided by the Intel chipset. An Intel gigabit ethernet as well as 7.1 audio out including optical audio out. On the back of the board we find your typical backplate and that is a matte black PCB. I know I've stopped commenting on it as much these days but that doesn't mean I like it any less. Matte black PCB is still the way to go. Aha, the fan headers. So we've got one, two, three, four, four pin PWM fan headers and I think that pretty much covers it. So if you're putting together an MATX performance rig with the new Ivy Bridge CPU and some kind of combination of high end graphics and an SSD and all kinds of, oh right, Intel SRT technology. If you don't want to run a dedicated SSD for your boot drive you can still use your SSD as a cache that is supported as part of the Z77 platform. And I don't even see anything about it on the box. Oh yeah, there it is. See, easy smart response. Gigabyte's way of setting up smart response is actually easier than anyone else's by a long shot. It's basically like a one touch setup to get everything running. So thank you for checking out this unboxing and don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxing reviews and other compu...