| Intel DZ77GA-70K Motherboard Components |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Motherboards | |
| Written by David Ramsey | |
| Friday, 11 May 2012 | |
Intel DZ77GA-70K Motherboard Components Review
Manufacturer: Intel Corporation Full Disclosure: Intel Corporation provided the product samples used in this article. Intel motherboards are not exactly on most enthusiasts' radar. But they do have a wide range of motherboards: in fact there are six motherboard product families: Classic, Essential, Executive, Media, Innovation, and Extreme. So there's actually a number of products to choose from, although still not as many as most other vendors. For example, there are only three Z77 Express-based motherboards, as opposed to the twelve that ASUS currently offers, or the five that MSI has available. As a reviewer I've only ever received the Extreme motherboards, presumably because they're the most interesting to our readership. I have not been impressed with the Intel motherboards I've reviewed in the past: while they all worked reliably, their performance (especially overclocking performance) has been sub-par; the BIOSes delivered with the boards have been buggy, and although Intel makes many technical details available I have yet to receive a board with a manual...although they do often come with nice large mouse pads.
The box for this motherboard does need some work. I think Intel's trying a little too hard with the giant skull, and pronouncements like "Highly Optimized For Intel -K Processors" seem a little silly. That said, the back of the box does do a reasonably good job of listing the board's features. Join me in the next section as I examine this new Intel motherboard. Closer Look: Intel Z77 MotherboardIntel didn't include a manual with this early release motherboard, but (for a change) it did actually come with most the accessories it was supposed to. Well, except maybe SATA cables. And a POST code quick reference card. And a couple of other things. But this is normal with early sample Intel motherboards. Starting at the top left and proceeding clockwise we can see a nice front panel USB 3.0 bracket (although it's a 3.5" design and many modern cases no longer provide 3.5" front panel openings), an unadorned black plastic rectangle that's actually a USB-connected Bluetooth 2.1 transmitter/receiver, a USB cable for it, the NVIDIA SLI connector and back panel I/O shield, and last the WiFi 802.11b/g/n module and its antenna. The WiFi module is designed to plug into a PCI-E x1 slot.
The design and layout of the motherboard follows standard ATX convention. Intel breaks with the "new convention" by including two PCI slots in addition to the two PCI-E x16, two PCI-X x1, and one PCI-E x4 slots. This might make sense in a motherboard aimed at HTPC or business users, who are more likely to have some old-school PCI hardware laying around, but it seems odd in an "enthusiast" board. The unloved "first PCI-E slot is x1" position is perfect for the WiFi board. Intel provides four bright red four-pin PWM fan headers on this board. 
The CPU socket area is pretty open and shouldn't present any clearance problems. Peeking under the edge of the larger VRM heat sink we can see that the board has an 8-phase power supply for the CPU. A couple of bright red PWM fan headers are visible in this shot.
You can see power and reset buttons just to the left of the main ATX power connector, and a small piezo speaker module is at the right corner. This is a nice feature I wish more motherboards had.
The Z77 Express chipset is covered by a skull-themed panel. It seems this would occlude airflow over the heat sink underneath, but I didn't have any overheating problems during overclocked testing. Just to the right is the oddly-socketed BIOS chip.
Let's take a closer look at this board in the next section. DZ77GA-70K ComponentsThe back panel I/O port starts with a PS/2 mouse/keyboard port, under which are two high-current (1.5 amps) USB 2.0 connectors, molded in bright yellow to stand out. High current USB 2.0 ports are nice for charging your iPad or other high-drain device, but putting them right under the PS/2 port will encourage people to plug keyboards and mice into them. That won't hurt anything but these ports do not support "wake from sleep", so if your system sleeps, you won't be able to wake it with the keyboard or mouse. Next are three standard USB 2.0 connectors, underneath which is a bright red ESATA port and above which is a FireWire 400 port. Next is the Back to BIOS button, which when latched down glows red and forces the motherboard to start at the BIOS update screen. Next are four blue USB 3.0 connectors, each pair underneath an Intel Gigabit Ethernet port. The vertically mounted HDMI port is this board's only video output. Last is a standard analog audio panel with an optical output.
Like any modern high-end motherboard, the Intel DZ77GA-70K contains a number of extra chips and controllers. I've shown some of the interesting ones here. First is a Genesys GL3520M USB 3.0 hub (the board actually has two of these). This allows Intel to bring out eight USB 3.0 ports (four on a pair of internal headers and four on the back I/O panel) from the four supplied by the Z77 Express chipset. This is the first time I've seen this chip on any motherboard; other companies use third-party USB controllers to add more physical ports. Intel's use of a hub has advantages and disadvantages over a separate USB 3.0 controller: the disadvantage is that you're sharing the bandwidth of four physical ports among eight connectors, so you won't be able to get full performance from all connectors at once. The advantage is that since there are no third party USB controllers, there are no PCI-E lanes allocated to them, freeing them up for other uses. And really, you're unlikely to max out all the USB 3.0 ports at once anyway. Next is an Intel 82579 gigabit Ethernet controller (the board also has an Intel 82574 Ethernet controller), followed by an ITE 8892E PCI-E to PCI bridge chip for those two PCI slots. The second row starts with a Marvell 88SE9172 SATA 6G controller, then a Texas Instruments Firewire (IEEE 1394) controller, and last a Winbond W83677HG sensor/fan controller chip.
At the lower left of the motherboard, we start with a blue IEEE 1394 connector, then a red PWM fan connector. Next are a group of "POST LEDs", which light up in sequence as each of the board's subsystems is initialized. We've seen this feature before on other Intel motherboards and I really like it. Next is a yellow SPDIF connector, followed by two USB 3.0 headers.
Continuing along the edge of the board brings us to the next USB 2.0 header, a yellow "high current" version, followed by two standard USB 2.0 headers and the front panel connector. Just above the front panel connector you can see the two-digit POST code display. 
Here's a shot of the POST LEDs as they appear after a successful boot. At the far left, note the HD ACTIVITY LED, as well as LEDs that will light up in red if the CPU or voltage regulator modules get too hot. Nice!
On the other side of the motherboard are the power phase LEDs. They act like a little bar graph, lighting up in sequence as you put more load on the CPU and the board turns on more power phases. In this shot the board is idle at the Windows desktop and so only two power phases are used.
In the next section I'll list the features of this motherboard. Z77 Express Motherboard FeaturesThis features list is provided by Intel. Processor SupportHighly Optimized for Intel -K Processors
Intel Z77 Express Chipset
USB Ports
System BIOS
Fast Boot
Hardware Management Features
Intel Pro 10/100/1000 Network Connection
Expansion Capabilities
Audio
System Memory
Front Panel Connectors
DZ77GA-70K Final ThoughtsIntel has made some interesting choices in the design and implementation of their enthusiast-oriented Z77 Express motherboard. Probably the most interesting innovation is the use of Genesys USB 3.0 hub chips rather than NEC, ASMedia, or Renesas USB controllers. While this does mean that each of the eight onboard USB ports should perform identically, you'll be sharing bandwidth in some cases. Like ASUS, Intel has included a PLX Technologies PCI-E multiplexer chip to work around the PCI-E lane limitations of an LGA1155 system. With a total of only 24 "native" lanes, the multiplexer chip helps by allocating lanes on the fly as various subsystems demand them. For example, the Marvell SATA 6G controller requires a couple of lanes for its two SATA 6G ports, but if those aren't being used (right this second), the lanes can be reallocated to another part of the board, like the PCI-E x4 slot. While still not as good as the 40+ native PCI-E lanes supplied by AMD 990FX and Intel X79 systems, it certainly makes LGA1155 systems more viable for enthusiasts who want to run multiple video cards, SATA 6G and USB 3.0 devices.
I have not had good experiences with previous Intel "Extreme" motherboards. However, this board impressed me with its performance, overclocking ability, and most of all what is possibly the best UEFI BIOS on any motherboard I've ever see. Yes, this motherboard is that good, and I'll be covering its performance and features in more detail in a pair of upcoming articles. Benchmark Reviews invites you to leave constructive feedback below, or ask questions in our Discussion Forum.
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