GIGABYTE has always been a big presence in the motherboard market. We can remember that we’ve always had a GIGABYTE board on hand in one form or another. One thing we can say is that they have always built solid boards. That’s not to say we’ve never had an issue with GIGABYTE boards, but the .

When Thunderbolt was first launched we had a board from ASUS on my doorstep were eagerly awaiting where the next would come from. To our surprise, GIGABYTE departed from the standard of installing a single Thunderbolt port on the board. While one is better than two, it all comes down to the implementation. Is it smooth? Does it work well with the other board components? Or is it an OROM hell where everything goes nuts when you try to populate the board?

These are the kinds of things we look for when testing a board with new technologies on it, and what we will do further into this review. For now, though, let’s take a look into what makes the new Z77X-UP5 TH board awesome and besides Thunderbolt what does it offer for your dollar?