14 DAY TRIAL // Famous motherboard manufacturer, Taiwanese company Gigabyte has just launched the first micro ATX mainboard with ThunderBolt technology. The new device is powered by Intel’s Z77 chipset and comes with complete support for Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors.
Gigabyte’s new board is officially denominated as Z77MX-D3H-TH and it is already listed online at prices near to the $160 (130 EUR) mark.
It brings everything a good Ivy Bridge motherboard needs and also comes with dual ThunderDolt ports.
The ports are provided by Intel’s DSL3510L dual-channel Thunderbolt controller and are electrically compatible with the mini-DisplayPort connectors, but they can also work as display outputs using the Flexible Display Interface (FDI).
The motherboard is using an 1155 processor socket that’s fueled by a 6-phase VRM. There are four DDR3 DIMM slots able to use up to 32 GB of memory running at 2400 MHz.
For graphics cards or more advanced adapters, the Z77MX-D3H-TH motherboard provides two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots that will work in an x8 + x8 configuration, when both are occupied. There are also two PCI-Express 2.0 x1, wired to the PCH.
The Gigabyte Z77MX-D3H-TH motherboard also has 6 SATA ports to connect hard drives, solid state disks or optical disc drives, but only two of them are SATA III.
Connectivity is well endowed with the two ThunderBolt / DisplayPort connectors along with DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI ports. Furthermore, there are four USB 3.0 ports available, but only two of these are already present in the backpanel I/O.
Gigabyte’s Z77MX-D3H-TH motherboard also has a combo PS/2 mouse/keyboard port along with four USB 2.0 ports on the backpanel I/O and five HD audio jacks along with an optical port.
What’s interesting is that Gigabyte’s GA-Z77MX-D3H is listed at around $110 and this makes the Z77MX-D3H-TH more than 50% more expensive just by adding two ThunderBolt ports. We wonder if it’s worth it.
