Z87 Hits The High End: Four Sub-$300 Motherboards

[brimur]

I always wonder about these MB benchmarks. For as long as I can remember they are always so similar with differences being negligable. Its really just comes down to the features you want on your board and the layout of the board

 

[Onus]

I'm waiting to hear if Asus will make their Sonic Radar available either on their older ROG boards with SupremeFX sound, or on their ROG sound card. I'm only a mild overclocker and run a single graphics card, so this is the only feature that interests me. I'm deaf in one ear and cannot tell direction of sound, so it may allow me to enjoy FPS titles (otherwise I'm dead before I know the direction of incoming).

 

[wussupi83]

I think it would be cool to see storage benchmarks on these boards. Only because I own an Z77X-UD5H and the extra Marvell SATA III ports perform barely better than the default chipset SATA II ports. When I started running benchmarks on my SSD I kind of felt a little conned at the Marvell SATA III add-ons were over 100MBPS behind the default Intel chipset SATA III ports. A real shame because I liked the board.

 

[rolli59]

Nice boards but I really believe that the Gigabyte is the next class down and should be compared to the $200 boards, which is the max I would pay for a board anyway.

 

[Crashman]

Nice boards but I really believe that the Gigabyte is the next class down and should be compared to the $200 boards, which is the max I would pay for a board anyway.

That's why it didn't win the value award in this class. It just doesn't fit into this price segment, but they tried to make it fit anyway

I think it would be cool to see storage benchmarks on these boards. Only because I own an Z77X-UD5H and the extra Marvell SATA III ports perform barely better than the default chipset SATA II ports. When I started running benchmarks on my SSD I kind of felt a little conned at the Marvell SATA III add-ons were over 100MBPS behind the default Intel chipset SATA III ports. A real shame because I liked the board.

We had a storage guy who did those controllers at one time. The thing is, any PCIe x1 controller is going to be limited by its x1 connector, but Intel's integrated SATA probably has direct DMI access.

If i get money for that i will pickup an asrock less watts =)

Gotta love the lower power bills, especially when AC is running right?

What about memory support? Or is that not an important to add to a feature chart anymore?

32 GB et al. Some of these could probably support 16GB DIMMs if they existed, but they don't, so every single Z87, Z77, Z68... they all support a maximum of 8GB per slot. No difference, no change, if you have a problem it's either bad memory programing or bad motherboard firmware.

What about quality of voltage regulation and power supplied to the CPU. Is there any difference across these boards?

You saw the explanation in the O/C section? There's a tiny difference between each board in the amount of over-voltage, yet none of them seem to be unstable.

The Asus Z87-WS would have been a great addition to this lineup since it is the only sub-$300 board that is currently available with a a PLX chip.

^^^THIS^^^I couldn't believe Asus passed up the opportunity to be the only board with 3-way SLI. But be careful in your description, because the ASRock board has "a a PLX chip" of a different spec :0

 

[rolli59]

Nice boards but I really believe that the Gigabyte is the next class down and should be compared to the $200 boards, which is the max I would pay for a board anyway.

That's why it didn't win the value award in this class. It just doesn't fit into this price segment, but they tried to make it fit anyway

It is not like they have not made a UD7H versions of other boards.

 

[vertexx]

You saw the explanation in the O/C section? There's a tiny difference between each board in the amount of over-voltage, yet none of them seem to be unstable.

Yes - read that. I wasn't sure if there was a way to quantify quality of power supplied to the CPU like you see in some of the better PSU reviews. Maybe it's not really an issue or not much variance between the boards. I'm thinking more of ability to maintain the stable OC over a longer period of time. For example, I have a lower-end MSI MB that I use to overclock a Phenom II X4-965. It seems over time that the stability of the OC has gone down somewhat - not sure if that's due to quality of voltage regulation provided supplied to the CPU. Primarily interested in if there are any other measurable differences between these Mobo's. It's alot of work you put into this article for what is measured to be pretty much a wash.

 

[Stevemeister]

I think sometimes people can't see the forest for the trees - the performance of these individual boards is so close that my conclusion is simply pick the one you like with the features you like or the colour scheme you like. Understand there will be variability in the manufacturing process of the boards that could affect performance and when it comes to overclocking the variability in Intels' products will make the biggest difference. long and short - you won't go drastically wrong with any of them.

 

[Onus]

I think sometimes people can't see the forest for the trees - the performance of these individual boards is so close that my conclusion is simply pick the one you like with the features you like or the colour scheme you like. Understand there will be variability in the manufacturing process of the boards that could affect performance and when it comes to overclocking the variability in Intels' products will make the biggest difference. long and short - you won't go drastically wrong with any of them.

I generally agree with this. The exceptions (which you hint at) would be dealbreaker/dealmaker features, or consistent quality issues with boards of that company (e.g. I doubt an enthusiast would trust Jetway).

 

[Crashman]

You saw the explanation in the O/C section? There's a tiny difference between each board in the amount of over-voltage, yet none of them seem to be unstable.

Yes - read that. I wasn't sure if there was a way to quantify quality of power supplied to the CPU like you see in some of the better PSU reviews. Maybe it's not really an issue or not much variance between the boards. I'm thinking more of ability to maintain the stable OC over a longer period of time. For example, I have a lower-end MSI MB that I use to overclock a Phenom II X4-965. It seems over time that the stability of the OC has gone down somewhat - not sure if that's due to quality of voltage regulation provided supplied to the CPU. Primarily interested in if there are any other measurable differences between these Mobo's. It's alot of work you put into this article for what is measured to be pretty much a wash.

The voltage levels used in this article couldn't produce enough current load to make the voltage regulators get all wiggly. What we see here are boards with recent high-amperage voltage regulator designs and a CPU that can't take the extra load without overheating.

 

[slomo4sho]

^^^THIS^^^I couldn't believe Asus passed up the opportunity to be the only board with 3-way SLI. But be careful in your description, because the ASRock board has "a a PLX chip" of a different spec :0

Fine, it has the PLX 8747 chip that increases lane counts to support 3 and 4 way SLI/Crossfire instead of the worthless PLX 8608 which only split lanes and produces unnecessary latency issues in 2 way SLI configurations.

 

[vertexx]

The voltage levels used in this article couldn't produce enough current load to make the voltage regulators get all wiggly. What we see here are boards with recent high-amperage voltage regulator designs and a CPU that can't take the extra load without overheating.

Got it - thanks!

 

[ruidc]

would be nice to see a benchmark across price points

 

[Onus]

^Agreed, except that a higher price generally buys more features and more durable components, not better benchmarks (although you may get higher, safer, and/or more stable overclocks).

 

[ruidc]

it's the stable Overclocks I was after to justify the increased spend beyond number of interfaces and options. Durability is less of a point these days when you can't upgrade the CPUs across generations for most families of Intel processors. Specifically: would be good to see the difference from $130 boards and their $300 variety, across overclocks, network performance with inbuilt LAN drivers etc.

 

[lp231]

One feature I like with the 1150 Asus ROG boards, is the build in SSD secure erase. It would be nice if they implement this feature across all their boards.

 

[sanilmahambre]

5 years warranty does make a difference

 

[Onus]

^I agree. A five year warranty is the primary reason I bought a Sabertooth when I built my AMD rig a couple years ago.

 

[bigcyco1]

5 years warranty does make a difference

That really depends if the buyer plans to keep a motherboard that long.I usually change mine every two or three years.

 

[slomo4sho]

^I agree. A five year warranty is the primary reason I bought a Sabertooth when I built my AMD rig a couple years ago.

Ironically, my Maximus VI Extreme only has a 3 year warranty even though it is the most expensive board from Asus on their Z87 lineup and the Sabertooth, which is about ~60-65% of the price, does have the 5 year warranty. In fact, the Sabertoth and Gryphon (mATX version of Sabretooth) are the only boards that offer a 5 year warranty. Even the Z87-WS only has a 3 year warranty even though it is arguably the most durable board in the lineup.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Reviewer seems like not really like MSI ~
Always favoring Asus, ASRock and Gigabyte ~
No matter how less differences between each board ~
MSI Motherboard , the reviewer never have comment ~

I am a MSI brand fans , I admitted it , but the reviewer seems like ignored MSI's afford.

After working in retail for a while you tend to see trends with motherboard manufactures. From what I have seen, Asus tends to have the overall most stable quality with the least amount of issues and very decent support for BIOS updates for newer CPU support beyond most.

ASRock has upped their game in recent years and has put more quality into their boards but they also have a lot of features much like Asus since they were once a part of ASUSTek and separated although Asus did put in a bid to buy them back but I haven't seen any word from them.

Gigabyte is a hit or miss. Their high end seems very good but their low end sometimes lacks.

Then there is MSI. I am not a fan of MSI. The TwinFRZR branded GPUs had a lot of issues, mainly the fans going out very fast. But I think there are two components that kill them for me the most. One was the massive heat issues their X58 boards had with the chipsets on a large number of their boards. We had a X58m from MSI that was idling at 58-60c for the chipset in BIOS doing nothing and we RMAed it. Came back with the same problem. Due to this heat most of the MSI X58 builds we did would lose SATA and come back sometimes on reboot. Had one customers machine that we went from a ATX X58 to a X58M and finally swapped them to an Asus which the chipset idled around 35c which is normal.

The second for me was the BIOS updates on a lot of their boards. Now I can't say on their high end but recently MSI stopped allowing you to update through the BIOS and instead only offered a Windows based app to update and that is just bad. If you bought a MSI with a CPU and it didn't support it, rather then being able to drop an older CPU in and flash it, you have to do an entire build including Windows installation to do it which is a waste of time. USB via BIOS is the best method and now Asus even has the ability to do it sans CPU so if you bought a CPU that needs a BIOS update, no biggie.

That's what I see of the brands. I tend to stick to Asus as they have always worked for me but I have experienced a lot and the article is fine. Its looks at the important features, as the majority of the software is not needed anyways and just bloat, and grades it from that.

What I want to know is why a ROG Asus board has RealTek sound instead of Asus own sound. RealTek is fine for those who don't care but for real sound Asus/Creative offer way better solutions. Then again it is appealing to overclockers mostly.

Actually myself currently using MSI P45 Platinum, I dont know their new product quality, but my current motherboard work for me for 5-6 years 24 hours operation still running well ~
Even without driver on windows 8 still working well after used windows 8 for sometime ~

I am going to upgrade this to Z87 Mpower in next year ~
Btw my current build by my brother ~
I going to build another setup based on MSI Z87 Mpower ~

My Brother can flash the BIOS well with MSI Live Update ~
It work well ~
Now my setup running stable with latest BIOS ~

Everybody has a different experience but as I said mine is from retail. We used everything from MSI to Asus to ASRock ect and I saw the least returns/issues with Asus and the most from MSI.

As for the BIOS, I never said the Live Update didn't work. I just said it is not the best way to do it and also the least efficient. Having to build out a system with Windows vs just throwing a supported CPU, RAM and a PSU and using the BIOS.

What about memory support? Or is that not an important to add to a feature chart anymore?

Most memory works in every board. Most support DDR3 2600MHz or higher in OC.

Unless you mean speed and in the case of most Intel chips, you can have DDR3 3000MHz but the gains wont be substantial and in the real world and gaming (which these boards are normally aimed at) are minimal as its already blazingly fast.

I think once we hit DDR4 we will see nice gains but not until then.

 

[Crashman]

What about memory support? Or is that not an important to add to a feature chart anymore?

Most memory works in every board. Most support DDR3 2600MHz or higher in OC.

Unless you mean speed and in the case of most Intel chips, you can have DDR3 3000MHz but the gains wont be substantial and in the real world and gaming (which these boards are normally aimed at) are minimal as its already blazingly fast.

I think once we hit DDR4 we will see nice gains but not until then.

Oh, was he talking frequency? Because available settings ARE shown on the overclocking chart, butt settings beyond the CPU's maximum (DDR3-2933) are not useable.

So, from my first answer, maximum capacity isn't a motherboard feature because the memory industry (rather than motherboard manufacturers) set a single limit of 8GB per slot that applies to all boards. And maximum frequency isn't a motherboard feature because Haswell sets a single limit of DDR3-2933 that applies to all boards.

 

[d3seeker]

Need 4-way SLI support! 😉

 

[bigcyco1]

Need 4-way SLI support! 😉

Unless you are running three or more high res monitors 4-way SLI these days is overkill lol!





































































































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[Crashman]

Need 4-way SLI support! 😉

All these boards support Quad SLI! None support 3-way SLI! 3-way SLI motherboards cost more than Quad SLI motherboards!

This is a cop-out of the marketing gurus. They refer to 4-way or Quad SLI support by using dual-GPU cards. They then put the extra slot that doesn't work in SLI on the board, hoping people will assume "if it supports 4-way, it supports 3-way!" And when people figure out that their assumption was wrong, the marketing gurus hope they'll blame themselves for that assumption.