The Board - Layout

The Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC is dressed in Gigabyte's usual color scheme for their "OC" series of products: a mad mix of orange and black that definitely has an impact on its presence. The rear of the board is actually pretty open, and it was nice to see that the heatsinks are attached with screws, making for easy replacement with watercooling blocks.


Both the front and back of the socket are purposely free of stuff should you want to go the way of sub-zero insulation, since being frozen to break records is the real focus of the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC.


The Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC has a full seven slots: three PCIe 3.0 x16 slots that connect to the CPU and a single PCIe 2.0 x16 slot. The first, second, and third slots are connected to the CPU as they would be on most Z87 boards, with varying electrical connectivity based on which ones are populated. The first and third slot are both electrical PCIe 3.0 x8 licks, which is perfect for dual-card users. The fourth PCIe x16 slot is connected to the Intel Z87 through a PCIe 2.0 x4 electrical link. There are four DIMM slots on the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC. Each supports DIMMs of up to 8 GB in density.


The lower edge of the board carries a relatively normal compliment of pin headers, USB, audio fans, and the like. Nothing here stands out. The Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC has a total of eight fan headers. Six of these are 4-pin PWM headers. The last two are 3-pin based.


The rear I/O has DisplayPort and dual HDMI for video outputs, two USB 2.0- and six USB 3.0 ports, and LAN- and audio ports. There's also a PS/2 Keyboard/mouse combo port for those that like to use such. Six SATA 6 Gb/s ports that connect to the Intel Z87 chipset can be found on the board's right edge; next to them are dual USB 3.0 ports for you to connect USB sticks and such to should you have the board assembled into your test bench, or just maybe...on the box. More on that later.