ASUS Z97-Pro WiFi AC Review
Published by Hiwa Pouri on 19.02.15Page:
Conclusion
| Overall | + | - | |
| At a first glance the Z97-Pro Wi-Fi ac leaves a good impression. You get a reasonable feature mix. There is a decent power design, plenty of SATA connectors, as well as a SATA Express header and an M.2 slot. It's these storage connectors, that add a lot of versatility to this board. What's also practical is the fact, there is a WiFi module on this board and on the I/O-panel you can attach two antennas. In case of the color scheme we're happy to see that the new Z97 Classic-Series from ASUS isn't as flashy as the Z87 motherboards anymore. |
- Design - Layout - SATA-Express - M.2 Slot - WiFi |
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| Layout | + | - | |
| Generally the ASUS Z97-Pro Wi-Fi ac's layout is very well thought. Once more very practical are the angled SATA connectors, of which there are six, as well as the power- and reset-buttons. We want to underline that this board feature great storage versatility, since there is a SATA, SATA Express as well as M.2 support. Also the debug display is very useful in case you should have issues with a component in your system or the board itself. 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. Should you decide to build an SLI/CrossFire setup, then the first card will still be able to get plenty of fresh air. 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. Something else we like is the fact that ASUS equipped this board with WiFi, which supports 802.11 b/g/n as well as ac standards. In case the board can connect to either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz networks. | -
Space around the CPU
socket
- SATA Express - WiFi - Power/Reset-Button onboard - Debug display - Angled SATA connectors |
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| Performance |
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| Let's first have closer look at overall 3D performance. Calculating the average of all 3D benchmarks we ran, we see that this board comes in the bottom quarter of our comparison tables. Concerning the average of all 2D benchmarks we ran, this board is also in the bottom quarter. Overall we would love to see ASUS improve the performance of this board. On another note we had a look at power consumption and in this case we clearly see that we have a board here that has been equipped with quite a few additional chips and therefore power consumption is rather high. |
- 3DMark Vantage - SuperPi 32M - SiSoft Sandra Memory bandwidth - SiSoft Sandra Memory Latency - Metro Last Light - Bioshock: Infinite |
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| BIOS |
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| As you might have expected from ASUS you get an excellent BIOS which offers not only lots 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
- Sheer amount of options |
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| Recommendation | + | - | |
| Should you be looking for a very well equipped and rock solid motherboard, which comes at a still reasonable but not cheap price, then the Z97-Pro Wi-Fi ac will be a great choice. If the power consumption, which is above average and the performance which is below average are no big deal for you this is a great motherboard. |
- Office
- Workstation |
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| Rating | |||
| We give the ASUS Z97-Pro Wi-Fi ac good 4 out of 5 stars. | |||
Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch
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