In our venture with the Intel Z77 motherboards we have taken a look at quite a selection of motherboards since launch. We’ve already sampled two GIGABYTE offerings and now we come to the third. The Z77X-UD5H has been one that I have personally been keen to take a look at and I know many of our readers have been intrigued as to know our thoughts on it.

Gone are the days when aesthetics were of no importance. GIGABYTE have paid careful attention with how Z77X-UD5H is presented; a matt black PCB with black connectors, ports, lanes and an aggressive looking heatsink design that has been given a striking blue colour to capture the eye. Z77X-UD5H is a sight for sore eyes, of that there can be no mistake but how does this motherboard perform? What are the features like?

Visual appearance is important with computer kit nowadays but performance and features are paramount. This motherboard performed well in our benchmark tests, it demonstrated its verstiility against other flagships from popular brands and overclocking revealed a significant boost over stock performance.



Though I’m not a huge fan of the BIOS, using it to overclock was very easy. Z77X-UD5H managed to reach a 4.7GHz overclock with our Intel Core i5-3570K. This achievement was just short of our best overclock with the Intel Z77 chipset – 4.8GHz.

Pricing for Z77X-UD5H (WiFi) means this motherboard sits around the £170 mark. Whilst the non-WiFi version is priced more competitively at £150. Rival flagships are priced around the £150 mark and so the WiFi version of this motherboard pushes it above the threshold. It all depends on whether or not having the wireless functionality is a necessity. In terms of value for money you are getting a fantastic offering in the Z77X-UD5H because you are getting supplementary features like additional USB 3.0 headers, mSATA and dual gigabit LAN ports.

Having used previous versions of GIGABYTE’s BIOS and being unhappy with performance it’s pleasing to see that improvements have been made. Movement and navigation is now fluid and getting the intended task performed is much easier. I’m still not a fan of the 3D BIOS though and I would rather GIGABYTE redesign their UEFI (Advanced Mode) – putting effort into making this arena look as good as the board does.

Z77X-UD5H has every conceivable feature for those wanting mid-high end performance with Intel Z77. At stock there is decent performance to be had and overclocking only helps to enhance this. This motherboard is simply one of the best looking offerings out there and I am happy to give Z77X-UD5H WiFi our Gold award.