ASRock, ECS, Gigabyte, Intel, Sapphire Z77 Motherboard Roundup - PAGE 6

The Intel DZ77GA-70K comes pacakged in a black box with the updated Skulltrail logo on the front. The box lists support for LGA-1155 processors to the left of the skull logo, as well as the fact it is optimized for Intel K series procesors, uses a visual BIOS interface, and features support for Smart Response adn Rapid Start technologies, PCIe 3.0 and USB 3.0.

Intel lists all the main features of the board at the back of the box, along with having a diagram pointing out where and how the features are used. The main features listed on the panel include Lucid Virtu support, the included WiFi adapter, SLI support and listing the type of processors that can be used in conjucntion with this board. All of the accessries are located inside the box and in total Intel has bundled an external USB 3.0 adapter. a Skulltrail mousepad, installtion guide, an SLI bridge and rear I/O shiled.

The Intel DZ77GA-70K has a sleek black PCB along with blue slots and heatsinks throughout the board. Overall, the aesthtics of this model are good, but they aren't at the same level as those from the other manufacturers. However, this still offers plenty of features such as SLI and CrossFireX support, eight on-board SATA porst, an LED diagnotic and WiFi support.

The board also uses all high quality components; all the capactiors are high-quality solid caps, there is a nice phase desing to power the processor and all the components on the board that will get the hottest have a dedicated heatsink. However, the heatsinks are connected via push-pins, which while effective just don't offer the same contact level as screws.

The CPU socket is powered by an 8+2 phase design and all the capacitors on the baord are high quality Japanese capacitors. Intel has also included a decent heatsink on the VRM, so even while the power reguation unit isn't as robust as some of the other models with an MSRP above $200, it still has the neccessary componets to properlly power any Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge processor.

Next to socket are four 240-pin DDR3 SDRAM DIMM sockets that support DDR3 1600+ /1333 /1066 MHz DIMMs. The slots are color coded per channel. The board supports up to 32GB of DDR3 memory and also has native support for Intel XMP memory.

The rear expansion options are quite extensive and include four USB 2.0 ports, two of which are Hi-Current/Fast Charging ports. The rear panel also includes four USB 3.0 ports, a clear CMOS button, a single PS/2 mosue/keyboard port and a IEEE 1394a port. Additionally, there are also Dual Gigabit (10/100/1000 Mb/s) LAN subsystems using the Intel 82579V Gigabit Ethernet Controller.

The on-board audio on the DZ77GA-70K is an Intel High Definition Audio (Intel HD Audio) configured as a 10-channel (7.1 + 2 independent multi-streaming) audio subsystem with six analog audio outputs with optical S/PDIF out port. The audio also supports Dolby Home Theater V4.

The expansion slots on the Intel motherboard consist of two PCIe x16 (one x16 electrical, one x8 electiracl) 3.0 slots, two PCIe x1 slots, and a PCIe x4 slot. This is actually a good amount of expansion and should give users plenty of options. Additionally, the two PCIe x16 slots support SLI and CrossFireX, and like the other boards in the Panther Point family, can be used in conjunction with Lucid Virtu and Intel Quick Sync for improved gaming and computing power.

In total there eight SATA ports on the Intel motherboard, with the four middle ports using the SATA 3Gbps standard and the remaining four (two grey, two blue) using the 6Gbps standard. Of the four SATA 6Gbps ports, two are controlled directly through the Intel Z77 chipset while the other two are connected by an add-on chip. This gives them different RAID support., but they all support the same transfer speeds.