ASUS Z87-Expert Review

Published by Marc Büchel on 19.12.13
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Layout

With the release of Intels Z87 chipset ASUS' design team chose to bring quite some change to the table with 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.
Regarding the layout ASUS has been managed to arrange this motherboards features nicely 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 this board is excellent and in this regard there is nothing to complain about.



ASUS equipped the Z87-Expert with an 8+1 phase VRM design whereas the CPU can rely on 8 phases and the memory gets one phase. 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. A closer look reveals, that the manufacturer is using capacitors of a little lower quality than the ones you get with for example the Deluxe series motherboards. Apparently ASUS decided for a compromise in order to push the price down.



Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Z87-Expert. 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.

  


Page 1 - Introduction Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 3 - Features Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 4 - Layout Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 6 - BIOS Page 19 - Bioshock: Infinite
Page 7 - Test setup Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery Page 21 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 9 - 3D Mark Page 22 - Power Consumption
Page 10 - 3D Mark 11 Page 23 - Performance Rating
Page 11 - 3D Mark Vantage  Page 24 - Price Comparison
Page 12 - PC Mark 7 Page 25 - Conclusion
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1  




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ASUS Z87-Expert Review - Motherboards > Intel > Z87 - Reviews - ocaholic