Layout

With the release of Intels Z87 chipset ASUS' design team chose to bring quite some change to the table of their classic series motherboards. ASUS was brave enough to ditch their black/blue color scheme. Nowadays their cash-cow-series features a black/gold/yellow color scheme. It is our personal opinion, that black/gold/yellow might not attract an audience as wide as black/blue. Black/Gold/Yellow is a very aggressive combination and we strongly believe that black/blue is a much better choice. We sincerely hope that ASUS will soon release their classic series motherboards with black/blue color scheme next to the black/gold/yellow line-up, since those were some of the most beautiful motherboards, that were ever avialable. We also believe that the black/gold/yellow was a poor descision and it will affect the sales numbers of ASUS' classic series motherboards and ASUS might even lose marketshare, since they wont be able to catch all the customers with their Sabertooth and ROG offers.
Regarding the layout ASUS has been able to squeeze an astonishing number of features onto a standard ATX motherboard. Obviously ASUS is compliant with Intels guidelines regarding clearance around the CPU socket. There even is some margin between the CPU socket and the DIMM slots. Apart from that the build quality of thie board is excellent and in this regard there is nothing to complain about.

ASUS equipped the Z87-Deluxe with an 16+2 phase VRM design whereas the CPU can rely on 16 phases and the memory gets its own two phases. Furthermore ASUS put a digital power design on the board, which comes meanwhile in the fourth generation. With their digital power design they promise that it emits less electromagnetic radiation than its analogue counterpart. Therefore ASUS claims that the system stability can be enhanced even further, especially during extreme overclocking. A closer look reveals, that the manufacturer is using solid capacitors with 5'000 hours lifespan, which is 2.5 times as much as standard cap's offer.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Z87-Deluxe. Officially supported are DDR3 - 3000 (O.C.) / 2933 (O.C.) / 2800 (O.C.) / 2666 (O.C.) / 2600 (O.C.) / 2500 (O.C.) / 2400 (O.C.) / 2200 (O.C.) / 2133 (O.C.) / 2000 (O.C.) / 1866 (O.C.) / 1800 (O.C.) / 1600 / 1333 MHz with up to 32 GByte capacity. The DIMM-slots aren't too close to the CPU socket which means that you can install even todays largets cooler. Obviously you have to double check compatibility when you use DIMMs with very large heatspreaders.

The power design is being held at adequate temperatures via a passive heatpipe cooling solution, whereas two heatsinks are being connected. The PCH is equipped with a passive cooling block. The aluminium blocks around the CPU socket are quite big but still there is plenty of space between the CPU socket and the heatsinks to install big aircoolers easily.