GA-Z97X-UD7 TH (rev. 1.0) Success with OS do?

Will anyone used it? (GA-Z97X-UD7 TH)
Want to know! Thank you!

GA-Z97X-UD7 TH (rev. 1.0)
www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4995#ov

Bought it yesterday, should be here Tuesday. I will let you know when it gets here and I get it all set up.

My biggest worry is that Apple hasn't updated OS X yet for Z97 support, although I'm not sure if it really matters as long as I disable Z97-specific features like SATA Express. But I'm hoping that was secretly added to 10.9.3. We'll see.

Could you give some details of your build as well? I'm looking into this board and any info that you could post would be awesome!

I will be checking this thread regularly since I hope to do a build with this mobo and a 4790K.

I'm particularly concerned with Thunderbolt and if having a TB-equipped device connected will cause the time, wifi and bluetooth icons to dissappear from the top-right corner of the screen... this occurs with both builds that I've done with a Z87X-UD5 TH, but not with any of the 7-series builds.

I'm also wondering if a Windows install must be done so that the mobo's Thunderbolt driver can be loaded before attaining TB functionality in OS X..

Best of luck and if there's any way I can help feel free to let me know!

Ragnar-Kon said:

My biggest worry is that Apple hasn't updated OS X yet for Z97 support, although I'm not sure if it really matters as long as I disable Z97-specific features like SATA Express. But I'm hoping that was secretly added to 10.9.3. We'll see.

Click to expand...

Oh yeah somebody already got a build going with a Z97 board so you should be good on that end..

I guess I will have to wait a while to see how things fare with ths K version of the 4790..

While I'm sitting here waiting for the motherboard to arrive, I'll give everyone the rest of the specs, as well as my thought process.

I work for a broadcast engineering company, and we have needed a way to offload 4K footage from SxS cards and the like. Therefore we needed a computer with a ton of I/O on it to connect several drives at once. The obvious choice would be the Mac Pro, but the price and the fact it is shaped as a trash can (would much prefer rack-mount) is driving us away from the official Apple offerings. Plus we really just don't need that kind of horsepower to essentially copy & paste.

I have brought it upon myself to fix this problem without help from my employer. My boss is nervous about going to non-official route, and quite honestly I could potentially rent this new machine back to the company to recoup some of my costs.

ANYWAY, enter Gigabyte. Last generation, as many of you know, had the GA-Z87X-UD5 TH and GA-Z87X-UD7 TH. The UD5 TH was limited to Thunderbolt 1, and the UD7 TH was quite frankly priced WAY to high for me. This new GA-Z97X-UD7 TH, however, is reasonably priced and so I pulled the trigger. BUT, just in case none of this works out, I am borrowing many of the components from my current gaming machine. Assuming everything goes well I'll then go back and buy new parts to complete it.

SO... specs:

New gear:

- Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD7 TH (obviously)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128703

- StarTech 3-port Firewire card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815158091

Gear to be borrowed from gaming machine:

- Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz Quad-Core
- Crucial Ballistix 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600
- Samsung 840 Pro Series 256GB 2.5" SSD
- SeaSonic 660W ATX12V / EPS12V
- (3) Western Digital BLACK SERIES 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM

Gear I had laying around:

- Blackmagic DeckLink Studio 2 (PCIe)
- Blackmagic UltraStudio Express (Thunderbolt)

Gear that may be added if experiment works:

- Sonnet Qio MR
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/qiomr.html

- iStarUSA D-400-7P
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811165418


Anyway, that's all for now. The motherboard is supposed to be here Tuesday, but I will be super busy this upcoming week week. So don't be surprised if you don't hear back from me until memorial day (or perhaps even the weekend after that).

Ragnar-Kon, thanks for the info. I may go ahead and pull the trigger as well, even if you haven't had a chance to report back. As you put it, the Thunderbolt 2 connectivity for this price point could be worth the risk.

B-San said:

I'm also wondering if a Windows install must be done so that the mobo's Thunderbolt driver can be loaded before attaining TB functionality in OS X..

Click to expand...

B-San, did you have to do this with your Z87X-UD5 TH board? I don't currently own a copy of Windows (I'm a video editor/colorist), so I wanted to check before dropping the money on it.

B-San said:

I'm also wondering if a Windows install must be done so that the mobo's Thunderbolt driver can be loaded before attaining TB functionality in OS X..

Best of luck and if there's any way I can help feel free to let me know!

Click to expand...

From what I understand, this won't be a problem.

Essentially the potential problem is this:

There is a limited number of PCIe lanes available on a motherboard. Dual Thunderbolt 2 uses (4) PCIe lanes. The Z87 chipset has a maximum of (16) PCIe 3.0 lanes, and (8) PCIe 2.0 lanes. Thunderbolt 2 runs off of PCIe 2.0 lanes, so the amount of PCIe 3.0 lanes is irrelevant.

So on the surface the Thunderbolt 2 ports seem to be fine, but there is a curveball in here. The network controller sucks up a PCIe lane, and there are several PCIe 1x slots on the board that could each suck up their own lane. With Flex IO, Gigabyte could have also lowered that maximum of eight PCIe 2.0 lanes to six. So it is possible that you would need a Windows program to deactivate the PCIe 1x slots in order to activate the Thunderbolt ports.

BUT, nothing to worry in this case. Gigabyte set up Flex IO to be 5/7/6 USB3/PCIe/SATA. Meaning the motherboard has five USB 3.0 ports, seven PCIe 2.0 lanes, and six SATA III ports run from the chipset. The seven PCIe lanes are used as follows:

1) GbE LAN chip
2) Marvell SATA controller
3) Thunderbolt 2
4) Thunderbolt 2
5) Thunderbolt 2
6) Thunderbolt 2
7) PLX chip for (3) PCIe 1x lanes

So essentially, there is no possible way to reconfigure the PCIe layout in this motherboard, meaning there should he no reason why Thunderbolt would be deactivated and need software to activate them. But we'll find out when it gets here.


EDIT: You can pretty much ignore this post. Apparently the issue with the Z87 boards was that you needed the drivers to "wakeup" the firmware in the Thunderbolt chip. Stupid, but okay. At any rate, it had nothing to do with a reconfiguration of how the PCIe lanes were allocated

Great! Very much looking forward to your results!：thumbup：

sandpuddle said:

B-San, did you have to do this with your Z87X-UD5 TH board? I don't currently own a copy of Windows (I'm a video editor/colorist), so I wanted to check before dropping the money on it.

Click to expand...

Yes I did, but you can download an ISO of Windows directly thru Microsoft without having to purchase an activation key; each installed copy of Windows 7 will run for 30 days without needing an activation. Basically you can install Windows just to get the Thunderbolt drive working, then delete the partition without any worries or money spent.