ASUS Z87I-Pro Review

Published by Marc Büchel on 14.08.13
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Conclusion

Overall   + -
At a first glance the Z87I-Pro definitely leaves a good impression. You get convincing feature mix and it won't take long until you realize that ASUS created a product, which should feature a reasonable price tag. Apart from the excellent power design there are no other overclocking features onboard, which is one reason why ASUS has been able to reduce cost. Instead you get for example six SATA connectors, which makes this board perfectly suitable for small file servers or powerful HTPC's. Next to that it is obviously also possible build a quick mini-ITX gaming rig based on this board. We won't talk too much about the new color scheme. In our opinion it is a pity that ASUS ditched black/blue for black/gold.   - Design
- Layout
- mini-ITX
 
       
Layout   + -

Basically the ASUS Z87I-Pro's Layout has been well thought. In order to make more space on this tiny PCB, ASUS deployed a daughter PCB's, where you can find the power design. Furhtermore the straight SATA 6Gbps ports have been placed at the only locations where it makes sense to have them, when you look at this point from the accessibility perspective. Another thing we like are the four 4-pin fan header on the left side of the CPU socket. Even removing graphics cards is easy, since there is a lever, which is well accessible when a VGA is mounted.

  - Space around the CPU socket  
       
Performance   + -
Let's first have closer look at overall 3D performance. Calcualting the average of all 3D benchmarks we ran, we see that this comes in fourth in comparison tables. Concerning the average of all 2D performance, this board scores again fourth place. Furthermore, when we dig deeper into the individual results, we see that this board offers consitent performance. On another note we had a look at power consumption and in this case we see that for a mini-ITX board it's quite high. Basically it needs as much power as an enery efficient ATX motherboard, but since there are a lot of features, these results are easy to understand.   - Sleeping Dogs Low
- Metro Last Light High
- wPrime 1024M
- SuperPi 32M
- SiSoft Sandra Memory Latency
- SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth
- 3DMark Vantaghe
- 3DMark Fire Strike
- Sleeping Dogs High
       
Overclocking / 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 - Sheer amount of options  
       
Recommendation   + -
If you're looking for a high-end mini-ITX motherboard, then there is no way around the ASUS Z87I-Pro. This board offers a flexible feature mix and it's even reasonbly priced.   - Enthusiast build
- File-Server
- Gaming
- HTPC
 
       
Rating
We give the ASUS Z87I-Pro very good 4.5 out of 5 stars.





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  


Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch




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