Gamer's Guardian |
With this name ASUS is
talking about a feature group, which consists of DIGI+ VRM, DRAM OCP,
ESD protection, and a stainless steel I/O shield. As usual there is a
digital power design on this board and there are 1R2 phases. Each phase
also received one MOSFET as well as one 10K black metallic cap and
there is a total of eight phases. This power design is not high-end but
it's still more than enough for any average gaming PC.
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ASUS Fan Xpert 3 |
ASUS Fan
Xpert 3 provides customizable settings for fans that have been attached
directly to the onboard fan headers. With the Fan Auto Tuning feature,
ASUS Fan Xpert 3 automatically detects and tweaks all fan speeds and in
the end reduces unwanted noise. |
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M.2 Support |
The
new Z97 ATX motherboard from ASUS features an M.2 slot moved to the back
part of the board this board can be equipped with SSDs in M.2 format. M.2 is wired directly to the Z97 PCH via two PCI Express lanes,
therefore offering x2 bandwidth. In other words up to 10 Gbps can be pushed over the bus through this slot, almost doubling performance of SATA-III.
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SupremeFX |
Also
the Gamer series from ASUS are getting beefed-up audio meanwhile. In
this case there is an EMI shield in place for the audio chip and the
circutry is isolated from the rest of the motherboard. Other than that
ASUS is using high quality capacitors, which should be offering warm
sound. |
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SATA Express |
SATA Express is a new port for storage devices that basically combines two SATA connectors and bundles them. Each SATA Express port has been wired using two PCI Express Gen2 lanes offering a total of 10 Gbps bandwidth. Compared to SATA-III with 6 Gbps bandwidth this is quite an improvement. |
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Gigabyte Z97X-UD3H Review 