Gigabyte Technology has revealed its new Z170X-UD5 TH motherboard. This Skylake processor supporting (LGA1151) motherboard is claimed to be the world's first to be the Intel Thunderbolt 3 certified. Thunderbolt 3 connectivity is available over either of the two reversible USB Type-C connectors on the rear I/O panel.
We have seen quite a few Thunderbolt 3 enabled laptops launched in recent weeks so it's good to start seeing motherboards destined for desktop PCs starting to be launched with this fast and flexible interface built-in. Gigabyte's Z170X-UD5 TH uses Intel's controller to bring a single wire bandwidth of up to 40Gb/s and support for protocols such as DisplayPort 1.2 and USB 3.1. Thunderbolt devices can be daisy-chained for even more flexibility – for connecting multiple monitors, for example. Gigabyte's implementation supports up to 12 devices attached to theZ170X-UD5 TH's dual ports. Last but not least the interface can supply up to 36W using Power Delivery 2.0 technology over the USB Type-C ports.
Other key features of the Gigabyte Z170X-UD5 TH are; use of the Intel Z170 chipset, support for up to 4x DDR4 DIMMs with dual-channel and XMP support, Intel GbE LAN chip, 3 x PCI Express x16 slots (PCIEX16, PCIEX8 and PCIEX4) supporting 3 way/2 way SLI or CrossFire, 1 x M.2 Socket 3 connector, 3 x SATA Express connectors plus RAID support, 2x USB Type-C, 8x USB 3.0/2.0 ports, 5 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports, HDMI out, 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel 115dB SNR Realtek ALC1150 audio codec with S/PDIF out, isolated audio circuitry, CPU and water cooling fan headers and 4x system fan headers. This motherboard has 2 x 128Mbit flash AMI UEFI BIOS and is in the ATX form factor (30.5cm x 24.4cm). Windows 7 32/64-bit and Windows 8.1/10 64-bit are supported.
As you might have guessed from the model name suffix, this is an Ultra Durable (UD) board. It features an all new heat sink design over the PWM area and chipset, long lifespan black solid capacitors, 2x copper PCB design, a 15μ gold plated CPU socket and ultra-durable PCIe metal shielding said to be 1.7x stronger against horizontal shearing and 3.2x stronger for socket retention.
In the email HEXUS received from Gigabyte the firm didn't give any indication of pricing or availability.
