Question 1

Does this board need a video and audio card if it has an i7 prosessor in it?

Accepted Answer

If you're asking about a GPU on this board and are planning on putting an i7 in it, I can only assume that it's going to be used for gaming.  No, it doesn't NEED a dedicated graphics card (there's one integrated on the Core i7 die, but I'll go into detail on it in a tad), but I DO recommend shelling out another $250-300 for a graphics card since the one on the i7 is about on-par with what's in the Xbox 360 (in other words, not very good).  If you're going to be spending THAT kind of money on a CPU like that, then I would recommend getting a GPU to match.  The absolute MINIMUM that I would recommend so that your CPU doesn't get bottlenecked (performance limited by one weak component) is either a GeForce GTX 760 or a Radeon R9 280 (I personally have a $500 GeForce GTX 780 in my system).  Also, one more thing to consider is whether or not your power supply can support a graphics card; a Core i7 ALONE uses up about 84 watts, so you'll need a fairly beefy PSU to power that.  Hope that this helps.

Question 2

what sort of power supply do I need to run this board? I am a first time builder.  I was planning to use an older Dell Dimension 2350 case (its the right form factor) and using its 250W ? power supply

Appreciate any help

Accepted Answer

I would think 250 W might work okay although I am using 500 W.  The problem you may have is that Dell PSUs are not necessarily compatible with non-Dell systems.  If you give it a try, I doubt you could hurt anything; it just may not work.  You probably can't fit another PSU in the Dell case, so you might then have to buy a case and PSU.  But I have used this board and another virtually identical (one is a socket 1150 and the other is socket 1155).  I purchased a Corsair 500 W PSU for one and a PC Power and Cooling 500 W for the other. Both work great.  Be sure your 2350 case has the rear access setup to match up with the mobo.  Your 2350 may have more slots available than the board, but you can probably get around that. The tough part will be if the slots are on the wrong side of the board (many Dells are like that) or if the headers for video, audio, USB and so on won't fit in the hole provided.  If so, get a very nice but very inexpensive case like Fractal Design Core 1000 Micro ATX for as little as 30 bucks and sometimes free shipping. N82E16811352032  --- I love the board and the case and the PSU and am pretty happy all around. Hope you are too.

Question 3

does it have onboard wi-fi? i dont like to have a lot of Ethernet cables running all over the place

Accepted Answer

Yes. It has Gigabit LAN (Realtek 8111F-VL)

I've got one of these with four hard drives in it, connected to my home LAN and using three LAN-connected hard drives. It has zero cards installed as everything I need is on-board. The video is quite acceptable pushing movies at 1080p to a big screen.  I'm using the on-board video through the DVI connection because the screen I'm using does not have HDMI.  But I have a new screen to hook up when I get some spare time and will use the HDMI then.

Super board!  You'll like it!

Question 4

Does this support 1.35v DDR3 Memory?

Accepted Answer

Zen,
The GA-Z87 Bios does allow the user to adjust the DRAM voltage from well below 1.35volts to over 2.00volts.  If the memory stick you are installing is rated at 1.35 volts it should work just fine with the MB.  I would recommend utilizing the Gigabyte web site and downloading the PDF file with the memory support list.  I found this board to be well made and to date has performed flawlessly with Window OS and Linux OS.  With the GA3220 processor I used with this MB, Linux Mint 15 OS ran better than any other combo I have ever built.

Question 5

What memory do you use?

Accepted Answer

I use these G.Skill sticks: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL , http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-231-428 I found.

Question 6

Would I be able to fit a XFX Double D FX-795A-TDKC Radeon HD 7950 Black Edition 3GB 384-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support Video Card into this motherboard? I'm pretty sure I can, I just want to make sure so I don't blow $400 out the window.

Accepted Answer

Yeah, you can fit one in there. But I wouldn't suggest buying the XFX 7950 BE in the first place. It's overpriced at 400 dollars at the moment. In fact, a lot of the AMD cards are going for a lot more than what they're worth because of cryptocurrency miners. For a 7950, you shouldn't be paying 400 dollars, especially since it's last gen. To put it in perspective, I paid 325 for my 7970 around a year and a half ago.

Question 7

I see a few honest negative reviews about this board.  Can this be counted on as a reliable basic overclocking mobo?  Not looking for anything super fancy but just something that is reliable and can overclock if needed.

Accepted Answer

I bought a overclocked kit from F's for the gen3 socket 1155 cpu. The 3.4 gig cpu immediately came up at 3.8 gig. And then.....
I have a second system that I use, that almost never is connected to network. I decided to upgrade this second system to the same as the first.  So I ordered mobo, and ram. Later tried to order CPU, sorry its no longer available, replaced by gen4, so ordered it. Then found out that the replacement CPU is socket 1150. I found a motherboard that matched the specs of my previous motherboard except for socket 1150 instead of 1155, and now on to your question. This second system has a 3.5 gig cpu, and came up at 3.5 gig. I read the specs on both, and the overclock features are the same. both cpu's are the 'x' version for overclock. One did its thing by itself, the other didn't. Both of my systems have 16 gig of ram, and Windows 7 ultimate. I think the Windows experience is 5.2 and 5.9

Question 8

What is the wattage this product uses?

Accepted Answer

I doesn't seem to produce any noticeable heat, your main wattage will be from disk drives. I put in a 750 watt supply, that offered variable speed fans, and very low noise. I don't think they have have ever ran. The mobo needs the 8-pin cpu power connector (2x4). I did find out that some of the larger supplies need a minimum load just to start up, I had to add an additional hard drive.

Question 9

what is the best ram to use for this motherboard?

Accepted Answer

As for me, the best 240-pin memory for this kind of motherboard is Kingston KVR16N11S8 series. I have several 4GB rams on my 3 PCs (with H77, Z77 and Z87 motherboards) and all of them work perfectly. One refurbished module I have recently bought from NewEgg (there is KVR16N11S8/4) and it works fine both as dual channel and individual,.. and just in combination of 2+1 (4GB+4GB and 4GB) with the same and with the previous edition of this kind of memory. More over, I very like the LOWER profile of SOME of this series of memory (pay attention!), because air circulation ant etc.
Acctually, this GA-Z87M-D3H with i7 processor and those rams I use only several days and I do not know about future, but current condition allows me to put "5 eggs" for it.

Question 10

Would I have bought this board? yes, until i saw the dimensions.

Folks, micro atx is 9.6" x 9.6". anything else is a non-standard

form factor. Well gigabyte, you almost got it right.

Accepted Answer

Hi,

If you take the position that anything other than 9.6 x 9.6 is NOT Micro-ATX, then I suppose you are entitled to say you are right.

But, if a motherboard called Micro-ATX fits into a Micro-ATX enclosure and lines up with the standard Micro-ATX mounting holes and presents no problems with fit or peripherals, then the manufacturer MAY be entitled to claim it as a Micro-ATX board.

I purchased this motherboard for a customer machine along with a Fractal Design Core 1000 FD-CA-CORE-1000-USB3-BL Black Steel MicroATX Mid Tower Computer Case (N82E16811352032), CORSAIR CXM series CX500M 500W ATX12V v2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply (N82E16817139050), Crucial Ballistix 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model BLE2KIT4G3D1608DE1TX0 (N82E16820148500), Western Digital Scorpio Black wd5000bpkt 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive (N82E16822136856), LG 24X DVD Burner - Bare Drive 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 24X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA Model GH24NS95 - OEM (N82E16827136259), and Intel Intel Core i5-4670K Haswell 3.4GHz LGA 1150 84W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics BX80646I54670K (N82E16819116899).  I bought all but the Intel i5-4670K from NewEgg (someone else had a very attractive sale price at the time).

Everything fit without any hassle.  Everything worked just as expected.  The customer is happy and so am I.

I will probably buy more of these and I have no objection to GigaByte calling it Micro-ATX.

I also bought the predecessor GIGABYTE GA-Z77M-D3H-MVP LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard and Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000 BX80637I53570K and other similar items to fit in the same model Fractal Design case.  That motherboard measures 9.6 x 8.66 and installs flawlessly in the aforementioned Micro-ATX case.

I hope this information is useful to you and/or others.

CPU Socket Type	LGA 1150
CPU Type	Celeron / Core i3 / Core i5 / Core i7 / Intel Core 4th Gen (LGA 1150) / Pentium / Xeon (LGA1150)
Supported CPU Technologies	Turbo Boost Technology 2.0

Number of Memory Slots	4x240pin
Memory Standard	DDR3 2933(O.C.)/1600/1333
Maximum Memory Supported	32GB
Channel Supported	Dual Channel

PCI Express 3.0 x16	1 x PCI Express 3.0 x16
PCI Express 2.0 x16	1(running at x4)
PCI Slots	2 x PCI Slots

Serial ATA (SATA)	6 x SATA 6Gb/s
SATA RAID	0/1/5/10

Audio Chipset	Realtek ALC892
Audio Channels	8 Channels

Meet Your Seller

GIGABYTE GA-Z87M-D3H 1.0 LGA 1150 Intel Z87 HDMI USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Used - Very Good

GIGABYTE GA-Z87M-D3H 1.0

GIGABYTE 8 Series Motherboards

Multi-Graphics Support

HDMI™ - The Next Generation Multimedia Interface

DVI Support

GIGABYTE Ultra Durable™ 5 Plus

Ultra Cool

Ultra Performance

Ultra Safe

GIGABYTE Exclusive Ultra Durable Technologies

Gold Plated CPU Socket

One Fuse per USB Port (USB 3.0 only)

GIGABYTE On/Off Charge™ 2

GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOS™

GIGABYTE App Center

GIGABYTE EasyTune

GIGABYTE @BIOS

GIGABYTE EZ Setup

Learn more about the GIGABYTE GA-Z87M-D3H 1.0

Warranty & Returns

Warranty, Returns, And Additional Information

Warranty

Return Policies

Manufacturer Contact Info

Back I/O Ports	1 x HDMI / 1 x PS/2 Keyboard/Mouse Combo / 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 / 4 x USB 3.0
PS/2	1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
Video Ports	D-Sub + DVI
HDMI	1 x HDMI
USB 3.0	4 x USB 3.0
USB 1.1/2.0	2 x USB 2.0
Audio Ports	6 Ports

Onboard USB	2 x USB 3.0 + 6 x USB 2.0
Other Connectors	1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector 1 x CPU fan header 3 x system fan headers 1 x front panel header 1 x front panel audio header 1 x S/PDIF Out header 1 x serial port header 1 x parallel port header 1 x Trusted Platform Module (TPM) header 1 x Clear CMOS jumper

Form Factor	Micro ATX
Dimensions (W x L)	9.6" x 8.86"
Power Pin	24 Pin

Onboard LAN
LAN Chipset	Realtek 8111F-VL
Max LAN Speed	1Gbps

Item#: 9SIC3VHKVW7875