ASUS Z87-A Review
Published by Marc Büchel on 20.12.13Page:
Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| As expected the ASUS Z87-A is a well-built motherobard that comes with a highly competitive price tag, but therefore lacks the amount of features you get with more expensive boards. Regarding the new color scheme (black/gold/yellow) we would still wish that ASUS throws it over board as soon as possible and goes back to black/blue. We mentioned the reasons for this on page 4. Overall this is definitely a solid motherobard which offers a decent basis for any office or midrange PC. | - Price | ||
| Layout | + | - | |
| Generally the ASUS Z87-A's Layout is well thought. Once more very practical are the angled SATA connectors, of which there are six. Furthermore the placement of the PCI-Express x16 slots is well thought an therefore nothing needs to be criticized at this point. There are for example two slots between the first and the second PCI-Express x16 slot. Another thing that is good with this board is the fact, that there as plenty of space between the CPU socket and the heatsinks on the power design as well as between the CPU socket and the DIMM slots. | - Angled SATA connectors
- Place autour du socket |
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| Performance | + | - | |
| Let's first have closer look at overall 3D performance. Calcualting the average of all 3D benchmarks we ran, we see that this board comes in on the 12th spot. Concerning the average of all 2D benchmarks we ran, this board reaches a solid 7th place. Overall the performance of this board isn't bad at all. It is somewhere in the center span. On another note we had a look at power consumption and in this case we clearly see that we have a board here that hasn't been equipped with an armada of features. In the end this means, that power consumption is low. In fact, it this board can be found close on top positions, when it comes to power consumption. | -
3D Mark - 3D Mark 11 - wPrime - 1024M Multi Core - Cinebench R11.5 - Multi Core - Metro Last Light (high details, high resolution) - Power Consumption Idle/Load - Efficiency 3rd spot |
- SiSoft Sandra -
Multimedia - UC Bench - Super Pi 1.5 XS - 1M - Bioshock: Infinite (low resolution, low details) |
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| BIOS | + | - | |
| As you might have expected from ASUS you get an excellent BIOS which offers not only a boatload of tuning and tweaking options but is also very easy to use. Especially with the entry screen ASUS is trying and also succeeding to add elements which make the BIOS much easier to use also for unexperienced users. For example the feature that the boot order can be changed by drag'n'drop is a neat addition. | - Clear arrangement | ||
| Recommendation | + | - | |
| Should you be looking for a solid motherboard that features a very aggressive price tag, then the Z87-A will be a great choice. |
- Office
- Midrange |
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| Rating | |||
| We give the ASUS Z87-Expert good 4.5 out of 5 stars. | |||
Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch
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ASUS Z87-Expert Review |
ASUS Sabertooth Z87 Review
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