Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Review

Introduction

So now we've had a look at what the i7-4770K is capable of at stock when running on the basic Intel motherboard, it's time for us to have a look at the first of our Z87 motherboards, the Gigabyte Z87-D3HP.

The Z77 version of this motherboard was one of the best value ones available on the LGA1155 socket, providing good performance and features in a small, affordable, package.

This latest version based on the Z87 chipset has all the features you'd expect. Plenty of USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbp/s ports, and perhaps most importantly the first all black PCB that Gigabyte have used at the bottom of their range. One of the big boons is the new version of their UEFI which not only looks much better, as we'll see on later pages, but is capable of being skinned and customised by the user. We all love to customise wherever possible and this will definitely help give a holistic feel across your system, as well as give vendors a chance to splatter their logos hither and thither.

Overclocking and Low Power

Of course the primary sphere of interest for our review is to see how the overclocking of the i7-4770K behaves, and the increase in the instructions and much more powerful HD4600 iGPU has meant that heat is much more of a consideration and limitation than it was previously on the LGA1155. Nonetheless we managed a very respectable 4.6GHz on the Z87-D3HP. Knowing that this is the base model in the Gigabyte range we're very impressed indeed.

Speaking of things to be impressed about, energy efficiency is a key part of the 4th Generation Intel CPUs, and look at the voltage in the right hand screen shot when idle. In total our test system drew a frankly incredible 51W when the system was idle.