Introduction

Ever since Intel released Ivy Bridge architecture processors back in April a lot of motherboard manufacturers made something really special out of their Z77 motherboards. From top to bottom the product line has been filled and as such that is predominantly a saturated market really.

EVGA, as well, stepped onto the Z77 bandwagon and now has released the Z77 FTW (For The Win). As always EVGA separates itself from the herd by manufacturing a motherboards that might not be the most pleasing one to the eyes, but does make technology that will raise the heartbeat of many enthusiast PC aficionado's.

Z77 is of course the Intel chipset predominantly released for Ivy Bridge based processors. These motherboards will have a slightly altered feature set and thus support them new Ivy Bridge apples from Intel. Good to know however is that Z77 also supports Sandy Bridge Socket 1155 based processors, that's right your favorite Core i5 2500K and Core i7 2600K will be perfect for these motherboards as well. The changes for Z77 primarily can be found in native USB 3.0 support as well as an upgrade towards PCie gen 3 PCIe x16 slots.

So today a closer look at the technology and of course a deep review of the EVGA Z77 FTW. The motherboard comes loaded with enthusiast features like five PCI Express x16 slots. You'll spot dual Gigabit Ethernet (Marvell), plentiful numbers of USB 3.0 ports, a debug LED, 7.1 channel audio all amped and juiced up over a 10-phase power design. But wait Dave, there's more. SATA connectivity for example: storage is done right with SATA ports.

The motherboard also comes with triple BIOS, Clear CMOS, Power and Reset buttons. Along with its 100% solid state capacitors, EVGA Dummy OC tech and EVGA E-LEET Tuning support. 5 x16 PCie slots -- that will boil down to four x8 gen 3.0 with an added PLX (+16 lanes Gen 3.0) chip so the board also supports quad SLI and Crossfire. Aimed and priced at roughly 329 USD / 300 EUR the board really is keen to get us all interested.

So yeah, the motherboard screams tweaking and overclocking. Let's go check it out. Next page please.