Gigabyte Motherboard Queston

[Roostertail]

Hello

My son and I are planning to build our second computer, it will be a gaming machine. I have my heart set on using a GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H-WB LGA 1155 INTEL BOARD, and a I5-3570K CPU ETC. I was wondering if someone could please tell me if this particular board is PCIE 3.0 X16 Compatible or not.

any advice would be appreciated.

[zburns]

Hi Roostertail, interesting question!

1. Here is URL for the Gigabyte page for the motherboard GA-Z77X-UD5H-WB (it is a WiFi mobo): http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4167#
On the first page for this Gbyte mobo, the first item describes the Exclusive Bluetooth 4.0/WiFi Expansion Card for mobile devices (I assume this means your mobile device or phone can transmit to your computer).

2. Still on the first page from the Gbyte URL, scroll down about 1/3 of the page and you have this feature spelled out:

(Direct copy from the Gigabyte page for the GA-Z77X-UD5H-WB mobo)


Designed for PCI Express Gen.3 Support

GIGABYTE 7 series motherboards take advantage of the latest connectivity and expansion bus technologies available on the Intel platform. (see zburns note 1) The 3rd generation Intel® Core™ processor platform debuts the new PCI Express gen. 3.0 expansion bus, allowing users to take advantage of the next generation, high-bandwidth discrete graphics card solutions.
* PCIE Gen.3 is dependent on CPU and expansion card compatibility.

(zburns note 1): It is my understanding that the wording in this sentence describes PCI Express 3.0 technology. Click this wikipedia URL, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1155 . Look under Ivy Bridge, Z77 column and you see PCIe 3.0 x 16 (and more).

3. If you click 'Specifications' on the Gigabyte mobo page, scroll down to Expansion Slots, you see this statement in parenthesis: (The PCIEX16, PCIEX8 and PCIEX4 slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)

4. My conclusion is that the above clearly tells you that the mobo is designed for the later PCI Express 3.0 spec, but you clearly have to 'hunt' for it, and that is a bit strange.

[Roostertail]

Thanks for your help and time ZBURNS.