Layout

At a first glance the ASUS Gryphon Z87 looks very good with its harmonic design. Once again the TUF-colors - black, brown and grey - suite nicely and together with the black PCB it becomes a beautiful product. The layout itself is well thought and there is for example plenty of space around the CPU socket to install even todays largest CPU coolers. The fact that there are SATA connectors which have been angled by 90 degrees allows an easy installation of oversized graphics cards.

The ASUS Gryphon Z87 comes with a digital 8+2 phase power design. The CPU gets eight phases and the memory gets a stable current supply from two individual phases. A bit closer in detail: this board has been equipped with eight pairs of ON Semiconductor NTMFS4937N and NTMFS4955N Power MOSFETs as well as four International Rectifier IR3535MPBF drivers. Overall this power design is capable of withstanding a daily air overclock, but it's not as sophisticated as the one you find on ASUS' ROG motherboards. You can see, that this is one part of the board, where ASUS had to save money on components to reach an aggressive price tag.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Gryphon Z87. Officially supported are DDR3 1866 / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz. There is engough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you wont encounter compatibility problems with big coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders. Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 1.3.

On the Gryphon Z87 the southbridge is being cooled by a passiv cooling block. A closer look at the area where the VRM is, shows that there are two additional heatsinks, which have been connected with a heatpipe. Like they do with every new TUF motherboard series, ASUS changed the looks of the heatsinks slightly.