All Of Asus' New Motherboards At CES

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RazberyBandit

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The 970 Pro Gaming board isn't the first AMD 970 Chipset board to support nVIDIA SLI. It may be ASUS's first SLI-capable AMD 970 board, but it's not the first of its kind.

The MSI 970A-G46 did so and it was released roughly three years ago. Another such board would be MSI's 970A SLI Krait Edition.
 
Still love the Arctic camo theme on the Sabertooth. My next build is going to be white themed. So tired of the run of the mill black/red and black/blue builds with black case.

But regarding the Maximus, I've never been a fan of the completely closed up "protection" of the PCB cover. Sure it looks cool, but it looks like it would be a PITA to deal with when going through dust blowout maintenance. I assume that cover can be removed for cleaning the motherboard PCB.
 
Not only do I want the Sabertooth because its awesome, just like I said in the MSI article.
Its something different. Not black/red all the way round (LEDs dont change a thing). I have always wanted to do a build with that kind of board, liquid cooling to match, and the works.
 
Still love the Arctic camo theme on the Sabertooth. My next build is going to be white themed. So tired of the run of the mill black/red and black/blue builds with black case.

But regarding the Maximus, I've never been a fan of the completely closed up "protection" of the PCB cover. Sure it looks cool, but it looks like it would be a PITA to deal with when going through dust blowout maintenance. I assume that cover can be removed for cleaning the motherboard PCB.

Even better, the m.2 slot's cover can be removed without having to take out your GPUs.

I'm with you on the color schemes (looking at my red and black from 2011).
 
Smart move to follow MSI's lead with the Sabertooth using Mil Spec components and the etching on the MoBo, Tho in the Sabertooth's case, the aesthetics looks a little busy. Hopefully, we will soon see wider adoption in this vein. Remembering the days when Asus GFX cards came with stickers where one could carry the color theme to other components, it would be nice to see vendors offer this option as well.

Was kinda surprised to see the CrossChill water block continue in light of the Asus / EK partnership with MonoBlocks designed to fit various boards. As convenient as pre-instralled block is, I'd rather have a MonoBlock. At $399 though the Formula as is seems a bit overpriced as is, whereas paireded with an accompanying Monoblock, breaking $400 to say $425 would I think be an attractive option which would attract more buyers.
 

nycalex

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i don't really know the purpose of asus sabertooth series.

they are not even high end. they just look......gimmicky.

i'm currently using a sabertooth z77 and it has less features than my first gen p8p67 pro as far as overclocking goes. i thought it would be an enthusiast board, but i was vastly mistaken.

as far as color goes...........who cares? i mean do you show off the computer to everyone?
does it make you feel more manly by changing the led colors on a board? never understood the color themed builds.
i guess i'm old school, for me = as logn as it's fast and it works.
if i ever show the inside of my builds, some of you will get a heart attack. as i don't even do cable management. screw that, i just put everything together, make sure air flow is ok, and call it a day.
 


I've been building overclocked gaming rigs since the late 1990s, with my first one being a Celeron 333 overclocked to 450MHz. Never needed a top-of-the-line motherboard to do any of my aggressively overclocked builds. Not sure what your needs are. I also have a P8P67 Pro running my 2500K but stepped "down" to an ASUS Z97-AR mobo for my 4690K overclock build. As you can see by my sig, it's doing it's job just fine.



I do. And my builds over the years have sparked passion in people who never built a PC in their lives and I taught them how to do it (and showed them forums like Tom's) and they became PC build enthusiasts. Even better considering there were some teens among them who I taught and some wound up studying I.T. in college.
 


The TUF series is designed primarily for workstation users who prioritize reliability over all other considerations. It also has gained a following among enthusiasts, despite it's lack of many OC / gaming features, due to the superior componentry and sometimes aesthetics.

1. 5 year warranty.
2. Higher quality components, the TUF series is designed for reliability.
3. Additional cooling (when fan installed)
4. Performance in Z97 on TUF series is oft better than RoG line

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/msi_z97_gaming_6_review/10

The ranking is based on setting the board which recorded the highest combined fps in the gaming tests at 100% and ranking the others by fps as a % of the fastest one.

MoBo % of Leader

MSI Z97 Gaming 9 - 100.00%
MSI Z97 Gaming 5 - 99.86%
MSI Z97A Gaming 6 - 98.96%
Asus Z97 TUF Sabranco - 96.13%
Gigabyte Z97X Gaming 5 - 95.00%
Gigabyte Z97X SOC Force - 94.95%
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Hero - 93.67%
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Formula - 93.58%
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Gene - 91.69%
Asus Z97-A - 89.57%
MSI Z97 Mpower MAX AC - 88.20%
MSI Z97S Krait SLI - 71.01%

5. User Satisfaction

The % listed below are the percent of Asus board owners from above list who posted highly negative (1 egg) user reviews.

Asus Z97 TUF Sabranco - 9%
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Gene - 10%
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Hero - 19%
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Formula - 26%
Asus Z97-A - 26%
Asus X99 Deluxe - 33%
Rampage V Extreme - 35%

6. Aesthetics .... Although performance and reliability are my primary concerns, I do take pride in my builds and the most important person who sees it is me. I have to look at it every day. I want to see the flow indicators when I look in the case window so as to confirm flow is satisfactory and also even in the parallel GFX card loops. I do want to be able to view the reservoir coolant level and see it is at the proper level. I so want to see that there are no leaks, dust buildups, stray cables, stopped fans and also read the Error Codes on the MoBo when system fails to boot.

I also occasionally peek at the digital temperature display which monitors coolant temps at 4 points in the system as well as ambient and inside case air temp. For example, I recently noticed that the flow to the bottom GFX card was less then the top which is indicative that the lower card probably picked up a paint flake or other obstruction in the micro-channels. I'll probably take it down and clean when we have the holiday in February. I also log the temperature / flow data and use it when designing new systems for prepare user guides to peeps to size radiators, pumps and the like.

However it also must be said that the machine does sit in my office and when potential clients come in and sit across the desk in my office, I think many see the box a reflection of the person / firm they are considering to hire. I am not into LEDs or other "bling" but, for example, water cooling using flexible tubing going every which way offends my sense or order.

The box does generate a fair amount of inquiries and, in a sense ... with the pumps, tubing and fittings, is a reflection of what we do. We design water treatment facilities in which ownership costs are highly dependent upon efficiency in every system and subsystem. Even a small increase in efficiency can mean 6 figures in energy cost savings per year.

In addition, one of the things we do is build CAD workstations, office machines and gaming builds for other engineers, friends, family, employees, colleagues, neighborhood kids, college buddies, whatever. Well .... better said .... we sit with those users, help them select components while understanding what the differences are and when parts arrive, guide them thru building those boxes, standing by thru each step of the assembly, OS install and configuration process.

The most rewarding part of this is working with young kids and their parents and seeing them take pride in something they do together. Months of even years later, hearing back from those kids / parents as they go onto their next build, in between asking questions, it's rewarding hearing about the pride they took in building their own box and the bonding experience they had with their child / parent at the time. Give a kid a bike and it's left out in the weather, dropped on the ground and generally not well taken care of. But when a kid puts the effort into building a bike (or PC), it's something they have a sense of pride and ownership for. I find, I never get calls from these families asking me to clean out viruses, empty their too small SSD or whatever mishap they have run into. They tend to "take care" of the PC partly because they are now comfortable going inside it and cleaning out dust whatever but also what they put on it as they don't want to mess up "their build".
 

pmdr

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The 970 Pro Gaming board isn't the first AMD 970 Chipset board to support nVIDIA SLI. It may be ASUS's first SLI-capable AMD 970 board, but it's not the first of its kind.

The MSI 970A-G46 did so and it was released roughly three years ago. Another such board would be MSI's 970A SLI Krait Edition.

As an owner of the MSI 970A-G46 board, it may have had this feature but it also had many other features such as a really awful set of power MOSFETS which made it incapable of handling processors beyond 125 watts or overclocking much of any kind for any proc, or else it would be likely to burn up. So. I think this severe limitation (i.e. you are stuck running lower end CPUs) kind of takes away from any other feature the board was supposed to do. Replaced mine with an Asus MA99FX Pro board and never looked back. IT actually works properly. And I am not running SLI anyway so a board that works versus one that barely copes but has SLI I won't need, this was an easy choice. ymmv
 

tlhudson69

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How does the Tuff have Quad sli/crossfire with only 3 PCI-e x16 slots?????
"-Nvidia Quad-GPU SLI, Nvidia 2-Way SLI
-AMD Quad-GPU CrossFireX, AMD 3-Way CrossFireX
Expansion Slots -2x PCI-e 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8)
-1x PCI-e 3.0/2.0 x16 (at x4 mode)
-3x PCI-e 3.0/2.0 x1"
 

tlhudson69

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DUAH!!!! was not thinking of 2X cards.... was trying to figure out how to get 4 cards into 3 slots......ROFLOL!!!!

 
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