- Date:
- Tuesday , June 11, 2013
- Author:
- Daniel Dobrowolski
- Editor:
- Kyle Bennett
- Share:

Gigabyte Z77X-UP5-TH LGA 1155 Motherboard Review
Gigabyte’s Z77X-UP5-TH motherboard is chock full of features that allow all kinds of connectivity; dual Thunderbolt support, Bluetooth 4.0, a robust WiFi technology, and nine different SATA connection points. We put it through our usual paces and see how fast and stable it is as well as how it performs when overclocking.
Overclocking
I had fairly heavy expectations for the Gigabyte Z77X-UP5-TH in the overclocking department as other Ultra-Durable 5 boards have proven worthy on that front before. The last motherboard I looked at was the Z77X-UP7 which was an absolute BEAST on the overclocking front having reached one of the highest speeds I’ve seen on any Ivy Bridge based system. That board achieved 4.91GHz and settings below that were easily attained in terms of effort required.
First I wanted to give the automatic overclocking a try. According to the red button in Easy Tune 6 I should have seen 4.68GHz assuming it was able to achieve the 104MHz BCLK. For some reason I didn't get 4.68GHz but rather 4.58GHz. The Easy Tune 6 software said it would. Unfortunately the CPU voltage was set for 1.38v and my temps are around 80c or so. At 4.58GHz that's simply not necessary and settings like that unchecked could be bad over the long haul. So if you’re the kind of person who uses automatic overclocking tools then be careful as manual adjustment of some settings after the fact may be necessary.
On the manual overclocking front I had high hopes for the Gigabyte Z77X-UP5-TH. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to achieve any more than 4.73GHz. This overclock required far more tuning than most LGA1155 boards I’ve worked with lately. Many newer boards can hit 4.7GHz+ with stock CPU PLL voltage or increases to 1.85v. Older boards often required 1.9v CPU PLL voltage. On this board I had to enable CPU PLL overvoltage and increase it to 1.9v. Load line calibration had to be set to max for CPU vCore and I had to use 1.265v. Some boards can do with less and some end up needing slightly more. For whatever reason this test setup ran hotter than usual with temps pegging the 90c mark easily and occasionally going past that. I also found it necessary to set the CPU PWM response time to its highest value. I don’t normally have to do that for a 4.7GHz overclock.
4.73GHz (103x47) DDR3 1646MHz
While I think the Gigabyte Z77X-UP5-TH is generally a good overclocker it didn’t blow me away like the Z77X-UP7 did.
Conclusion
Dan's Thoughts:
Ultimately I feel kind of "meh" about the Gigabyte Z77X-UP5-TH. First of all the Gigabyte Z77X-UP5-TH has three minor issues pertaining to the layout as far as I am concerned which I outlined on the first page. Almost every board has at least one layout issue in my opinion. Usually good and even great motherboards never have more than one or two issues. The Easy Tune 6 software is dated and laughable at this point with a laundry list of things it doesn’t do that it should do. And finally the Z77X-UP5-TH is a good overclocker but not a great one. It’s more fickle than some other boards out there are.
Absolutely none of these issues are by itself are a deal breaker. And even one or two of these can be shoved aside pretty easily. Even when viewed in total all these issues are barely issues at all when you get right down to it. The motherboard as it is evaluated on its own merits is still a good board but when viewed in the same context as all the competition out there I think things change for the Z77X-UP5-TH. In other words the Z77X-UP5-TH is a good board. It’s just not a great board.
Kyle's Thoughts:
The Gigabyte Z77X-UP5-TH arrived to me in good shape and well protected in some snazzy packaging. Out of the box it had the F11 BIOS and using the QFlash utility I updated to F12e quickly and successfully. The Windows 7 OS loaded without issue and the Z77X-UP5-TH was up and running stability testing quickly and without issue.
Overnight unincubated stress testing was successful. I incubated the motherboard and ran fully successful with all 8 threads for 4 days before seeing a thread drop in Prime95, which is not out of the ordinary for this Intel Core i7-3770K processor. The ambient internal temp climbed to a healthy 45C, but the Z77X-UP5-TH continued on for 6 days before finally black screening.
My overclocking experienced mirrored Dan's, so there is little to discuss there.
The Bottom Line
The Gigabyte Z77X-UP5-TH is a solid motherboard with some very good features. While it is not an edge-of-the-envelope overclocker, it is far from timid. If you have use for the Thunderbolt technology and extremely robust wireless integration, the Z77X-UP5-TH could certainly be a solid workhorse for a very fast system with tremendous bandwidth. All of this comes with a $238.99 price tag, which is certainly a value if you can leverage the feature set. And with that we say goodbye to the Z77 chipset as far as HardOCP reviews go.



