Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Review

Up Close - The UD5H

You definitely wont be short of connectivity on the UD5H. As well as a plentiful supply of USB ports there are 9 SATA ports too. It might initially appear an odd choice to move the front panel header into the middle of the motherboard, until you remember that whilst case manufacturers have long since understood that they need big cables for big cases, the people who make USB front panels have yet to be informed that things larger than mid-towers exist and insist that 3 inches of cable will be plenty, so we need all the help we can get.

Something that is slowly starting to make its way into the odd motherboard is the 1.8" mSATA format. Truly tiny drives that can be a great, cost effective way to make the most from the IRST cache without filling your drive bays up.

The on-board switches are one of those things that are almost designed for those of us who overclock a lot in a tight time frame. The average user has no real need for a power button on the motherboard, but we love them. Although the reset switch being so small, and so close to the clear CMOS, is bound to get some people swearing. It's good to see some voltage monitoring points too, which hint at the intended audience for the UD5H.

Round the back we have all the expected outputs, from multiple display options, through USB 3.0, dual Gigabit LAN and the 7.1 Audio. No PS2 port, not even in combination, so those of you with old IBM model Ms need to prepare in advance. 

In total we have 5 SATA 6Gb/s and 4 SATA 3Gb/s providing all your storage requirements.