Gigabyte has made a startling return to form with its Z77 series. Back in the Z68/Sandy Bridge era it was losing ground daily to the Asus front-runners, and small upstarts such as ASRock were really eating into its mobo numbers.

But a tighter rein on product numbers and more focus on the different options on offer has made this generation of Gigabyte boards every inch as competitive on the desktop as the other big guys.

In the last PC group test, Gigabyte and Asus split the machines between them, with the bargainous Gigabyte Z77X-D3H and Asus P8Z77-LX making up the majority of builds. So Gigabyte has you covered at the lower-end and, with the Z77X-UP5TH - a super-specced board with a pair of Thunderbolt connections - it's got the high-end catered for too.