Gigabyte H77N-WiFi Review – First Look at Ivy Bridge with mITX
by Ian Cutress on November 6, 2012 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gigabyte
- H77
- mITX
Design of a product is a key part in being able to sell it with positive results. This is why the Apple vs. Samsung case is so big – design wins like to propagate to competitors and the original designers want to hold onto their design as much as possible. We are not going to see anything like Apple vs. Samsung in the motherboard industry, but it would be interesting if that were the case.
But the point remains – as users, we want plenty of design wins to come from all sides. So what happens if a company launches a product with great gusto, but it acts more like a design flop? Is there oversight in the design from the manufacturer, or have other departments apart from design chipped in with their opinion. Ideally some of the features should be designed by market research, rather than by micro-management. Then again, it is also dependent on how the market research is carried out – choosing several PC enthusiasts and asking their opinion is not proper and methodical market research.
By the nature of being a technology reviewer, I am also a critic. I never mean my criticism to be rude, and always aim to provide reasoning and future suggestions about what I would like to happen. Thus after re-reading through this review, I am slightly taken aback by my level of criticism geared towards motherboard design. There are some odd design choices from the H77N-WiFi, such as the CPU/chipset orientation, the 4-pin CPU power connector, combining dual LAN with a WiFi module, no voltage options. But there are design wins – dual HDMI and DVI-I being the big one. There is also scope to change design – moving certain features to the rear may be a possibility as seen on other motherboards.
When I test a motherboard, I have an open test bed to allow cables to go where they please. This is normally oriented for ATX designs, where connectors are often in regular places. I had to move this around somewhat for the Gigabyte H77N-WiFi, dealing with SATA cabling at the top and restrictive CPU cooler options. If these are overlooked on the understanding that when it is in a case there is no cause for concern, then the Gigabyte H77N-WiFi offers a price competitive product.
For $120 we have a mITX board that gives an Intel WiFi Module with WiDi support, dual HDMI outputs combined with a DVI-I, and dual Realtek network ports. Performance wise I would easily suggest this motherboard paired with an i3-3225 to beat the A10-5800K in any single threaded workload you can throw at it. Multi-threaded workloads are more or less benchmark dependant.
I must apologize as I still have a backlog of Z77 mITX boards that I promised I would get through. Please stay tuned for those, as I also have Z77 OC boards and some FM2 coverage coming up. Stay tuned!
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Geraldo8022 - Wednesday, November 7, 2012 - link
I like the placement of the 24 pin power header. My E350 case has the external power button right where it interferes with the power header toward inside of front panel. Also I like testing with i3. I go for lowest power consumption. I use a picoPSU and would like to see these tested with that psu. For me it is a USB world. all I care about is HDTV, low power and USB3. If you want to overclock perhaps you should go with a bigger board.Pcosx - Wednesday, November 7, 2012 - link
Why don't anybody makes a z77/h77 board with dual link dvi output? Is it so much more to make one?Dug - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
Good question, and it would be nice to know the limitations of video output on these motherboards with different connections.Znarkus - Thursday, November 8, 2012 - link
Why present POST time with two decimal points, if there is a 1 second error margin?IanCutress - Friday, December 7, 2012 - link
Results from my stop watch. Error margin is a large overestimate of what it might be from human error, not hardware error. For each reading I take 3 measurements, and more often than not I get all three in the same 0.10 seconds.Ian
lwatcdr - Thursday, November 8, 2012 - link
I would love to know how well this is supported under Linux? No real need for Benchmarks just put Ubuntu, Mint, or Fedora on it and see if the Network, WiFi, Video, Sata, and USB all work.Also Hackintosh compatibility would be nice but maybe too out their to be worth your time but would be very cool.
mrgreenfur - Friday, November 9, 2012 - link
The spec table shows z77 chipset, should be h77?dingetje - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
please include the EVGA Z77 Stinger Mini-ITX Motherboard in the upcoming article.thanks
lemmo - Tuesday, February 26, 2013 - link
Thanks for the detailed review. Could you give an idea of what the audio benchmark actually means? Do those results indicate that the audio quality is good or bad?A review of the Gigabyte B75 ITX board shows that the audio quality is poor, and the Gigabyte Z77 board not much better. They also use Rightmark Audio Analyser, but represent the results differently so there is no way to compare. Please can you give your audio test results in dB(A) so we can compare?
http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/3645/6/gigabyte-ga...
It would also be good to have a wider comparison of the power draw, say with the Z77 ITX boards you reviewed.
raavan19raavan - Monday, April 15, 2013 - link
have problems with the graphics card!! Works fine with the graphics BIOS settings at auto but does not work with BIOS settings with graphics set to PEG and changed the miscellaneous settings from Auto to Gen1,Gen3 but still didnt work. Tested it on different systems and it seems to work fine but does not work only on this mobo, the mobo itself is fine again. The graphics card is a HD6670 1GB DDR5.