Drawing our thoughts to a close then, what is the overall verdict on Z77X-UP5TH?

Well it’s certainly very similar in performance to its sibling (or even successor) the Z77X-UD5H which likewise offers strong results in a range of different arenas. Overclocking is easy and very fruitful – doing so boosts performance significantly in different areas of usage. Against other rivals the Z77X-UP5TH proved a worthy contender for the Z77 crown.

The differences come with the aesthetics. Whilst the Z77X-UD5H was very pleasing to the eye it was vibrant and quite gaudy but the Z77X-UP5TH is much more subtle. It’s difficult to imagine aesthetics getting any better but they do. Z77X-UP5TH is an aesthetic masterpiece, we love it!



Though I’m not a huge fan of the BIOS, using it to overclock was very easy. Z77X-UP5TH 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.

Priced at £250 the Z77X-UP5TH is a costly investment ramping up almost an extra £100 compared to Z77X-UD5H. Compared to its predecessor you get one less gigabit LAN port and absent are the stack of Marvell SATA 3 (6GB/s) ports but instead this motherboard is equipped with dual Thunderbolt ports which may not be mainstream now, but it won’t be long before they are, so in this aspect Z77X-UD5TH is a good route to future-proof. Ultra Durable 5 and its strong lineup of features are also included with the “UP” range of motherboards and understandably this carries with it some of the increase in cost too along with the included WiFi/BT card.

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). Aesthetically this motherboard is very pleasing to the eye, it would be nice to see the BIOS interface correspond to this.



Z77X-UP5TH is an aesthetic masterpiece and a very impressive motherboard. It will satisfy those seeking high-end performance with Intel Z77 and has the added bonus of being future-proofed with dual Thunderbolt ports. The quality is brilliant, the feature-set is extensive and the overclocking is great can you tell why we are impressed?