Gigabyte Announces Three New Intel Z97 Motherboards

Gigabyte Releases Photos of Three New Motherboard Additions Using the Intel Z97 Chipset

Gigabyte recently posted an album to their Facebook page teasing a few of their new Z97 Intel chipset motherboards. Three flavors were previewed specifically so far: Z97X0-UD5H-BK, the Z97X-UD7 TH and the Z97X-SOC FORCE. The new motherboards will all be compatible with Intel Haswell refresh processors, in addition to existing Haswell CPUs. The lot will also support CrossFire and SLI graphics configurations. While Gigabyte tried to keep it covert by blurring part of the name in pictures, we can safely assume these will be based on the Intel Z97 which has already been announced. Gigabyte will be releasing a whopping 37 new motherboards for the upcoming Intel chipset.

Gigabyte Z97X-UD5H-BK

This motherboard is part of Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable and brand new Black series. These boards are designed for durability and longevity, and are reported to go through a week of server-level testing at Gigabyte’s Taiwan facility before going out for sale. They will also be backed by a great 5 year warranty. Gigabyte will be using Litecoin to help test the systems, and considering how many will be tested this could lead to a huge amount of coins! Rumor has it that Gigabyte is looking for a way to legally give the purchaser the Litecoins mined with the boards or give them away in a contest, so could be an extra bonus when purchasing the Black boards.

 Gigabyte Z97X-UD7 TH

Another addition to the Ultra Durable series, the Z97X-UD7 TH motherboard is part of Gigabyte’s bread and butter UD series. The new line has taken some features from the previous generation 8 overclocking and gaming boards. The TH in the name shows support for Thunderbolt (Thunderbolt 2 according to the box). Some of the boards in this series will have Killer NICs and some new overclocking functions.

Gigabyte Z97X-SOC FORCE

This motherboard is all about overclocking. Gigabyte has done away with many of the non-overclocking features on these boards to ensure they are capable of incredible speeds. There is no PLX chipset due to the increased latency that comes with it. There are also two USB ports on the front edge of the board to allow easy access and saving of benchmarks or profiles. It also comes with an additional 4-pin EPS connector and an extra PCIe x16 slot compared to the last two boards.

These three boards and a few other newbies were shown off in this video by Newegg.

Gigabyte has not released a ton of details about these boards yet and pricing has not been announced. We look forward to hearing about the other 34 boards that will be coming out, and seeing how these compare to others on the market. Gigabyte looks to be listening to its user base and adapting to what we want, so hopefully these will be big players in the scene.

Sources: 1, 2