Gadgetory

welcome to my unboxing of the PA z77 V Pro this is an all-new platform from Intel the z77 chipset supporting not only second generation that is Sandy Bridge core i3 Core i5 and core i7 processors but also third generation processors so that is codenamed Ivy Bridge so these are all z77 boards have the following traits in common actually I'm going to stick with what all a Suzy 77 boards have because not all of them have things like the dual intelligent processors that is for energy efficiency or for performance as well as their smart digi+ which is their eighth generation of digital vrm so they are all pcie 3.0 ready they all have support for crossfire X and then the certified boards have support for nvidia sli okay ii 22 / 32 nanometer processor support so that is second and third generation processors virtue MVP this is really cool virtue MVP actually has a number of neat effects so one is it can actually boost your performance - is it can reduce tearing in scenarios where your frame rate goes above the actual refresh rate of the monitor and finally it no longer requires you to plug the cable into a specific outlet in order to switch between D mode and AI mode so you can make use of that quick sync technology on the CPU which allows you to quickly encode video without sacrificing gaming performance okay moving on down we've got Intel Smart Response technology which allows you to use an SSD as a cache to boost up the performance of your boot drive as well as moving over haha this is awesome USB BIOS flash back easy BIOS flash back this is a killer feature because basically it allows you to no matter what you do to your motherboard recover it quickly and easily just by loading a BIOS file onto a USB Drive throwing it in the back of the board and pressing you know what I'm just going to show you guys pressing the let it go yeah I found it guys normally it's here so I was expecting to tell you guys the button that you press but actually on this particular board it down here doesn't make much of a difference it's not something you'll be using very often knock on wood but it's there and it's super handy because you don't even have to have a CPU or memory installed in order to recover your BIOS thumbs up because it could save you an RMA which can be up to a week of downtime without your system moving on we have their network eye control which the coolest feature in the network eye control is actually the ability to prioritize various applications it's pretty easy to set up in the AI suite so all you do is take any network using applications you bump them up into the sort of the manage applications queue and then you just click on the priority in order to set them to high medium or low so that's really neat as well a USB 3 boost so true.you ASP support now this is kind of tricky because the z77 chipset natively supports Intel USB 3 ports so this guy hold on one of these two front ones is going to be an Intel USB 3 port set of ports and then two of these rear ones are going to be our ok pullin one header for the front will be Intel 2 ports for the back will be Intel one header for the front is going to be as media and then two ports for the back are going to be as media so the Intel ports are going to over time have the advantage probably of you know more general wider compatibility to do it being Intel and they validated everything to death but as media has the advantage of supporting us piece with an compatible device you can get dramatically better performance under the as media ports so each Zeus gives you the option use this and this or use this and this whatever you decide you will get the best possible balance precise power control so as I mentioned before this is their eighth generation this is a fully digitally powered board now what's cool about what asus has done with 77 Birds they're actually moving away from using different types of PWM designs throughout their lineup so this is a pro-level board this is a fairly high tier board but even on their lower end boards they are still going to be using digital digital power for the CPU the memory as well as the integrated GPU so gone are the days when you have to buy a deluxe level board or a sabertooth or an ROG board to get digital power control for your integrated GPU which you are in all likelihood not using nope asus has moved those features down with the trickle-down effect to the boards that really need it finally Wi-Fi goes so this particular one comes with a Wi-Fi module which can actually be used not only to access your wireless network but also to stream media to support a DLNA devices as well as use your motherboard as an AP so as an access point for networking so DLNA media hub got that covered Wi-Fi connectivity everywhere yep so you can stream to your iPad to your phone other DLNA devices very cool you know what if you guys are curious about GPU you should probably check out my my roundup of pre-canned overclocking utility so you can either use the TPU button to get an automatic overclock although I wouldn't recommend that because the the aggressive mode in their AI suite the most extreme mode allows it to tune itself find the sweet spot for your CPU and really max it out in a way that these these one-button utilities cannot do let me just see if I've missed anything else on the back here if an expert to is really cool so you can set user definable sorry about that you can set user definable curves so that you basically tell it what temperature's you want it to run at what rpms also provides an RPM fixed mode as well as you an automatic fan speed detection mode which allows you to basically just more intelligently figure out what exactly you want to do as far as balancing your fan speed and your cooling goes here we go so we've got support for HDMI 1.4 which means 3d very cool SATA mode notice are configured to a GI mode by default thank you a Suzanne about time more motherboard manufacturers started moving to HCI mode by default because so many users are Lego online USSD doesn't perform very good it's like while you're running an IDE mode what can we do for you and once you once you've installed the OS onto an IDE mode drive it's a bit of a bear to get it changed around to HCI mode here's the Wi-Fi go card user guide including various things such as access point mode the Wi-Fi engine why if I go the moveable omnidirectional antenna alright we've got the user guide as well as the drivers and utilities disk which you should ignore and download the latest about the excuse website you've got an SLI cable we've got any Q connectors so these are two more easily plug in your front ports including front USB 2 as well as your front panel connectors such as your power and whatnot we have ok a Wi-Fi module here which unfortunately I was traveling recently and I forgot to put my knife back on my keychain I don't know how I'm gonna get this open guys alright we're good slick was gonna turn off the camera for me mercifully but I didn't end up needing it so there's the module presumably there's an antenna that I missed yep ok more accessories sorry about that guys so then there's that movable and this is cool because it has magnets on the bottom of it so you can actually position it wherever you want it looks like he's moved the one that was on my test bench before but I had it just like bolted to the side of the power supply actually here oh oh that's too bad because okay there's the wires here but yeah you can stick it to anything metal IO sealed rear rear eSATA as well as USB to just if you want some extra ports back there to say two three six gigabit per second cables to say two to three gigabit per second cables these are all straight to right angles and finally the board itself so we've covered most of the features so we're gonna go pretty quickly on the overview asus has actually got a really cool heatsink design I'm always sort of you know if you have always interested to see what they have my favorite is still the I think I called it fortress of solitude design that they had on their p55 boards I really liked that but this one's pretty good too it's very new age and digital like it kind of looks like City sort of thing I think it looks kind of neat and then this one is matching down here so that's your your tips a heat sink I mean mostly these heat sinks are for decoration these CPUs on this platform aren't gonna pull a ton of power I shouldn't say they're for decoration we do still need to cool the vrm but we're not talking you know an x79 platform where you got a six core CPU or anything like that this will be a four core CPU platform here is our digital power delivery as well as our LGA 1155 socket so be careful when you're installing it and don't try and install an 11 56 CPU I remember when all of them came with warnings about that and write support out of the box for 2nd generation and third generation CPUs dual channel ddr3 is over here this is another cool thing about z77 boards as they support the ddr3 1600 megahertz J Dex specifications so that means if you have j deck modules that is like bone stock modules that run at 1600 megahertz they'll work completely zero configuration in these boards here's the DI the mem okay button so that allows you to post pretty much no matter what kind of memory you got in there you've also got a 24 pin power connector and the 8 pin power connector and they're ideal locations along the right-hand edge in the top left front USB 3.0 port we kind of already harped on that included SATA 2 3 gigabit per second ports included SATA 3 6 gigabit per second ports as well as two others say 2 3 6 gigabit per second port so two of these are running off of the Intel chipset for these ports Asus is using an AZ media controller which while it doesn't support their SSB caching that we've seen on previous generation products it is slightly faster than the controller that does support the caching we've got our epu as well as our T few buttons remember this is for energy efficiency this is for extreme performance front panel connectors for front USB 2.0 headers front panel USB 3 front panel audio as well as moving along here ah yes ports that's top port so we have 2 PCIe 1x slots 3 PCIe 16x slots will do this guy is really only good for a PCIe 4x and this guy is really only good for PCIe 8x although bear in mind pcie 3.0 8x is the same bandwidth as pcie 2.0 16x so even if you're running to high-end graphics cards here you're gonna have plenty of bandwidth to legacy PCI ports round out the seven slots that are available oh yes fan headers so you can use a CSS software in order to control these fan headers we have one two three four five should be six where's the last one six four pin pwm fan headers and we can set all kinds of cool curves I believe it's fan headers one to four that you can actually use to use the auto tuning software for on the back we find a ps2 port that's for keyboard or mouse I still like to see these we've got four USB 3.0 ports two USB 2.0 ports optical audio out hdmi displayport VGA and DVI are all included Intel Ethernet that's how they're able to have that that packet sorting included on all of their z77 boards as well as 7.1 audio out on the back of the board we find a little bit of extra cooling for the vrm that's definitely not for decoration as well as little quality touches like installing the tips that heatsink using screws rather than pushpins so thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the p8z 77v pro don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips from unboxings reviews and other computer videos and last but not least USB charger plus allows you to quickly charge your devices plugged into the USB 3 are the USB ports on this motherboard even when the system is powered off and one other thing I pretty much forgot is the Thunderbolt header so asus is gonna have available for their full line of z77 boards with the exception of I believe the WS board a PCIe 4x a riser card that you can install in here and then run a little cable over to the TB header so you can add thunderbolt compatibility to your board for a very reasonable charge if you have a thunderbolt rating device that you want to use