ASUS Z97-A LGA1150 Motherboard Review

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Included Software

Included Software

Ai Suite III​

The foremost utility in ASUS' vast software suite is the aptly named Ai Suite III. Whereas ASUS used to have a handful of standalone apps for different functions, many were consolidated under the Ai Suite moniker back in 2011. This system management utility is the hub from which you can monitor system clock speeds, voltages, temperatures, and fan rotation but more importantly it allows users to do both automatic and manual overclocking from within Windows. The utility's third iteration was launched along with the Z87 motherboards, and now it once features a refreshed design and feature set with the launch of the Z97-A. Let's check it out.

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The 5-Way Optimization tab is where you will find the 5-Way Optimization automatic overclocking feature. You will also see very simplified information relating to the other five tabs, such as the Energy Processing Unit (EPU) power saving or performance profiles, Fan Xpert 3 fan speed optimization status, DIGI+ VRM optimization, awesome new Turbo App functionality, and some display-only information regarding TurboV Processing Unit (TPU).

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In the top-right corner of the Ai Suite utility is a downwards arrow that activates a dropdown screen when clicked. Here you will be features like Ai Charger+ and USB 3.0 Boost. When enabled, Ai Charger+ allows up to 3X faster charging of devices connected to USB ports, while enabling USB 3.0 implements the UAS Protocol (UASP) USB protocol that greatly enhances speeds while also lowering CPU utilization. The EZ Update tool allows users to update their motherboard's BIOS either directly from the internet or from a downloaded file. Ai Charger+ allows users to supercharge their USB ports, and enable up to 3 times faster charging of mobile devices.

System Information just contains a bunch of basic system information regarding your CPU, motherboard or RAM. You can also find you can find your serial number, BIOS version, etc. BIOS Flashback allows you to copy the content of BIOS1 to BIOS2, as well as force the use of BIOS1 or BIOS2.

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At the bottom is a static strip that displays information on CPU and DRAM frequency, real-time voltage and temperatures measurements, as well as CPU and case fans speeds. You can also set safe thresholds for voltages, temperatures and fan speeds as well as setting alerts to warn you of any serious fluctuations. It is essentially a replacement for the Probe II utility.

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Clicking on the 5-Way Optimization button reveals the coolest part of the whole Dual Intelligent Processors 5 utility. There is a certain level of fan optimization functionality in this section, but what's really interesting is the automatic overclocking feature. You will have the option of 2 different overclocking levels and 2 different ways of achieving that overclock, depending on whether you have an unlocked processor or not. We don't want to reveal too much here, so go check out the Overclocking Results section to see how well this auto-overclocking feature worked.

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The TPU (TurboV Processing Unit) tab is where you can manually adjust the BCLK frequency or CPU strap (100/125/166/200MHz). You will also be able to change the CPU multiplier, either per core or as a group. There are also an impressive eight adjustable system voltages. You can adjust all these settings on-the-fly without having to reboot the system, except for the CPU strap since it does cause such a dramatic increase in all system frequencies.

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The EPU (Energy Processing Unit) tab is you will be able to fine-tune the various selection of power saving or performance profiles. This is a versatile feature for those who truly care about maximizing energy savings.

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The DIGI+ Power Control tab is where you will find the power options for the CPU, System Agent/Memory Controller, and RAM. There are adjustable settings for load-line calibration, current capability, voltage frequency, and phase control. There are different power controls for each memory channel since they are independently powered.

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The Fan Xpert 3 tab is, as you might expect, where you can fully manage and optimize your CPU and system fans. While there are now a series of four fan presets (Silent/Standard/Turbo/Full Speed), you can also manually adjust the full fan speed curve to your preferences, or simply use the fully automated Fan Tuning feature.

 

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Included Software pt.2

Included Software pt.2

ASUS CPU-Z

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ASUS CPU-Z is a special edition of CPU-Z especially created to match the aesthetics of ASUS' other software utilities. This edition is found on the included software DVD, but it is not yet available for download from CPUID.com. As a result, we aren't sure if it will be kept as up-to-date as the regular version or even the ROG CPU-Z.

Turbo LAN

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Turbo LAN is a utility designed to help reduce latency courtesy of cFosSpeed traffic-shapping technology. This utility provides users with a lot of control and monitoring capabilities over every application that is accessing the network. It displays CPU usage, NPU usage, ICMP and UDP average ping, and the network utilization of every system process and program. This tool also allows you give priority to certain applications, and throttle or block others to free network resources for other applications. It is your one-stop tool for monitoring and controlling all network traffic.

Boot Setting

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ASUS Boot Setting allows users to boot directly into the BIOS without having to repeatedly hit delete during the POST screen. It is a pretty hand tool when you are rebooting as often as overclockers tend to do.

WebStorage

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The WebStorage utility is basically the ASUS equivalent of DropBox. It is cloud computing application that gives users web storage and access to data across many devices. All ASUS motherboard owners get a free 5.5GB of storage, you can buy more or be gifted some by ASUS if you referrer your friends. The web interface is pretty standard and utilitarian. Overall, there is not much to complain about, it's a nice freebie if you choose to use it.

 

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Test Setup & Testing Methodology

Test Setups & Methodology

For this review, we have prepared eight different test setups, representing all the popular platforms at the moment, as well as most of the best-selling processors. As much as possible, the four test setups feature identical components, memory timings, drivers, etc. Aside from manually selecting memory frequencies and timings, every option in the BIOS was at its default setting.

Intel Core i7 LGA1150 Haswell Test Setup​

For all of the benchmarks, appropriate lengths are taken to ensure an equal comparison through methodical setup, installation, and testing. The following outlines our testing methodology:

A) Windows is installed using a full format.

B) Chipset drivers and accessory hardware drivers (audio, network, GPU) are installed.

C)To ensure consistent results, a few tweaks are applied to Windows 7 and the NVIDIA control panel:

• UAC – Disabled
• Indexing – Disabled
• Superfetch – Disabled
• System Protection/Restore – Disabled
• Problem & Error Reporting – Disabled
• Remote Desktop/Assistance - Disabled
• Windows Security Center Alerts – Disabled
• Windows Defender – Disabled
• Screensaver – Disabled
• Power Plan – High Performance
• V-Sync – Off

D) All available Windows updates are then installed.

E) All programs are installed and then updated, followed by a defragment.

F) Benchmarks are each run three to eight times, and unless otherwise stated, the results are then averaged.

Here is a full list of the applications that we utilized in our benchmarking suite:

• 3DMark Vantage Professional Edition v1.1.0
• 3DMark11 Professional Edition v1.0.132.0
• 3DMark 2013 Professional Edition v1.2.362
• AIDA64 Extreme Edition v3.00.2536 Beta
• Cinebench R11.529 64-bit
• SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP
• MaxxMEM² - PreView v2.01
• Sisoft Sandra 2014.SP2 20.28
• Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark v1.0.0.0
• wPRIME version v2.10
• X3: Terran Conflict Demo v1.0

That is about all you need to know methodology wise, so let's get to the good stuff!

 

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Feature Testing: SATA Express Results

Feature Testing: SATA Express Results

As we mentioned in our ASUS 9-Series Preview article, one of the things that has became evident to us over the last month or so is that there are basically zero third-party SATA Express devices ready to hit the market any time soon. The situation is bad enough that we can't even call the SATA Express a "validated" interface. It's a feature that Intel thru onto this new chipset, but at the moment they aren't really going to accept responsibility for any early adoption issues. All the initial testing is going to come down to those manufacturers who decide to take a leap of faith and be the first to build SATA Express devices.

Thankfully for ASUS, having ASMedia as one of your subsidiaries means that you can easily and quickly whip together some pretty neat storage devices. With this in mind, they unveiled to us the interesting Hyper Express enclosure, which as you might have guessed utilizes the new SATA Express interface.

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There will be at least three variants of the Hyper Express, but it is basically a 2.5" or 3.5" enclosure that houses either two mSATA or two M.2 solid state drives, or two 2.5" SSDs (or even HDDs) and automatically sets them up to run in RAID-0. As a result, if you choose some sufficiently fast SSDs, you can likely end up with a high-performance storage solution that hits the 10Gb/s SATA Express bandwidth limit. This "first wave" device uses an ASMedia 1062R SATA 6Gb/s RAID controller and it does not currently support the TRIM command, which is obviously a pretty serious con unless you have SSDs with excellent internal garbage collection algorithms. Hopefully this is an issue that they can fix before it ever officially launches.

The unit that ASUS provided for this review came ready to go, which is to say packed with two Kingston SSDNow mS200 120GB mSATA solid state drives. These are based on the LSI SandForce SF-2241 controller and are rated at an impressive 550MB/s read and 520MB/s write speeds. Now this is not a review of this device, since this is still a pre-production product and you will not be able to buy one pre-assembled with SSDs inside. We just want to show you what SATA Express is capable of.

As you have probably know, most current SATA devices struggle to get anywhere near the theoretical 6Gb/s limit. Due to overhead you are realistically looking at real-life transfer rates of up to about 550 to 575MB/s. In its optimal 16Gb/s implementation, SATA Express will be capable of supporting transfer rates of up to 2GB/s. However, since the Z97 chipset and the LGA1150 platform in general has a severe lack of PCI-E lanes, the best that can be achieved right now is a 10GB/s interface that is limited to about 1GB/s of bandwidth.

With all of this in mind, let's take a peak at the results.

SATA 3 vs. SATA Express - Click on image to enlarge​

As you can see above, a modern solid state drive is definitely bottlenecked by the SATA 6Gb/s interface. In this case, this nameless SSD just slams into a wall at about 550MB/s. This is not a controller limitation, but an interface one. If you were to combine one of these modern SATA controllers with a faster interface, the results would be way above SATA 3's limits. That is what SATA-Express is promising to do. Not only do you get up to 1GB/s of bandwidth but there is a built-in backward compatibility with current SATA devices.

With the Hyper Express enclosure, we were able to almost tickle the 800MB/s barrier. Now admittedly this is the best result that we were able to accomplish across a variety of benchmarks. The Hyper Express is not ready for prime time, since its performance is all over the place depending on the benchmark and sometimes even within the same benchmark. However, it does give us a glimpse at what we can expect from future SATA Express devices. There is no doubt that within 6 months there will be devices that are fully capable of utilizing this interface's 1GB/s of bandwidth. That is pretty exciting when you consider how stagnant things had become on the SATA storage front.

 

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Auto & Manual Overclocking Results

Auto & Manual Overclocking Results

It wouldn't be an HWC review if we didn't include some overclocking results, so we thoroughly tested out this motherboard capabilities, especially with regard to its auto-overclocking functionality. Though it features a new chipset, the Z97-A is still fundamentally an LGA1150 motherboard, and as a result there is nothing new to report on how to overclock on this motherboard. Therefore, if you want to read some really in-depth information regarding how to overclock Intel's Haswell processors, take a look at what Eldonko comments in his comprehensive review of the ASUS Z87 Deluxe motherboard.

Auto Overclocking

The Z97-A features two types of automatic overclocking. Within the UEFI BIOS you can find the OC Tuner feature. This automatic overclocking method features two main options, a multiplier-only tuning mode or a multiplier and BCLK tuning mode. Although it is very fast - the time it takes to save & exit the BIOS - OC Tuner is based on presets and as such it produces much less impressive results than an intelligent software-based approach. Thankfully, one is included. Within the Ai Suite III utility there is the usual TPU automatic overclocking feature that is part of the new 5-Way Optimization scheme. This method features two options (Fast Tuning & Extreme Tuning) as well as two different methods for achieving that overclocking (Ratio Only & BCLK First). This is an intelligent auto OC feature though, it does not rely on presets. As a result, it will slowly increase your processor's clock speed and voltage, test for stability, and repeat until it has found the sweet spot. In this new version of the software, you can specify a clock speed to start from and even what maximum temperature you feel comfortable with.

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First up, we have the OC Tuner multiplier-only tuning mode. Its application was extremely quick - the time it takes to save & exit the BIOS - and it produced decent enough results. This preset staggers the CPU multipliers based on the core count of the workload. It sets a 43X CPU multiplier when one or two cores are engaged, a 42X multiplier when three cores are needed, and a 41X multiplier when all four cores are being utilized. It's nothing too special, but it is a solid increase over our i7-4770K's stock 3.5Ghz to 3.9Ghz range. We were impressed by the reasonable CPU core voltage that was applied, and even more impressed by the fact that it enabled our memory kit's aggressive XMP profile properly.

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The second OC Tuner mode utilizes both the CPU multiplier and the BCLK to achieve its overclock. In our case, that was overclocking our i7-4770K to 4.25Ghz (34 x 125Mhz) with a steady 1.17V. This mode will definitely give you a bit more consistent performance than the previous one, especially in heavily multi-threaded workloads. Given the non-stock BCLK, our memory kit's XMP profile was not applicable, but OC Tuner did set a very respectable memory frequency.

Overall, given how quick and easy it is to engage OC Tuner, consider us impressed with its current implementation. However, obviously we want even better results, and that is were the software-based TPU approach comes into play. Let's see what it can do.

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BAM! ASUS knocked it out of the park with the new TurboV Processing Unit (TPU) implementation that is embedded in the 5-Way Optimization feature. This second auto-overclocking feature is software-based, and it does not utilize presets. As a result, it does take quite a bit longer (5-20 minutes) and requires a few automatic system reboots. Within Windows, the TPU slowly increases the system frequencies and does some stress testing at each level until it finds the limit, BSODs, reboots, and voila! The overclock is set.

Now 4.7Ghz at 1.275V might seem too good to be true, and that's because it is. The 1.275V is the base voltage, and since ASUS are utilizing their adaptive CPU core voltage mode that figure can rise all the way to 1.40V under certain workloads. That much voltage will push your processor well into the 90°C range with most cooling options if you do any synthetic stress testing, ie: Prime95, LinX, etc. However, it should be fine for day-to-day use since there are no real-life applications that can hit a processor anywhere near as hard as the aforementioned stress tests. We have seen automatic overclocking features push our current chip all the way up to 4.9Ghz...but at an insane 1.54V. That is dangerous no matter what, so we are definitely more impressed with ASUS' method.

We can't really overlook the slight but welcome 100Mhz Uncore overclock, and the fact that the Auto OC process once again properly utilized our memory kit's DDR3-2400 XMP profile.

Manual Overclocking

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No big surprises here, we have long ago established the limits for this processor and memory kit combo. This is an identical overclock to the one we achieved on two previous GIGABYTE Z87 motherboards. We did not encounter any unexpected BSODs, nor did the MOSFET heatsinks get hot at all. However, we did have the occasional "Power Surge On Hub Port" error present itself while running Prime 95, but we suspect that it might be due to a misbehaving USB device on our end or just a bad manually-set BIOS setting. We will update this if needed. UPDATE (05/17): We isolated the issue as being caused by the Intel USB 3.0 driver, so for now don't install the separate driver package, just let Windows install its own generic driver.


Overall, when you consider the Z97-A's automatic and manual overclocking capabilities, it is hard not to be impressed. Whether you want an instant boost (OC Tuner), more performance without any real effort (TPU), or plan to go hands-on (manual), you won't be disappointed with what ASUS have accomplished here. The fact that Z97 is so similar to Z87 is a plus, since a lot of that know-now has been transferred to this new generation and it's already quite mature.

 

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System Benchmarks

System Benchmarks

In the System Benchmarks and Gaming Benchmarks sections, we will show a number benchmark comparisons utilizing the Core i7-4770K and ASUS Z97-A at default clocks, with the TPU Extreme preset applied, and using own our manual overclock. This will illustrate how much performance can be gained by overclocking the i7-4770K using this motherboard. For full comparisons of i7-4770K versus a number of different CPUs have a look at the Intel Haswell i7-4770K & i5-4670K Review.

SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP

When running the SuperPI 32MB benchmark, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system. We are running one instance of SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP. This is therefore a single-thread workload.

wPRIME 2.10

wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we're sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum. This is a highly multi-threaded workload.

Cinebench R11.5

Cinebench R11.5 64-bit
Test1: CPU Image Render
Comparison: Generated Score

The latest benchmark from MAXON, Cinebench R11.5 makes use of all your system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene using various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. This particular benchmarking can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

Sandra Processor Arithmetic and Processor Multi-Media Benchmarks

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. The software suite provides most of the information (including undocumented) users like to know about hardware, software, and other devices whether hardware or software. The name “Sandra” is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means "defender", "helper of mankind".

The software version used for these tests is SiSoftware Sandra 2013 SP4. In the 2012 version of Sandra, SiSoft has updated the .Net benchmarks and the GPGPU benchmarks have been upgraded to General Processing (GP) benchmarks, able to fully test the new APU (CPU+GPU) processors. The two benchmarks that we used are the Processor Multi-Media and Processor Arithmetic benchmarks. These three benchmarks were chosen as they provide a good indication of three varying types of system performance. The multi-media test shows how the processor handles multi-media instructions and data and the arithmetic test shows how the processor handles arithmetic and floating point instructions. These two tests illustrate two important areas of a computer’s speed and provide a wide scope of results.

MaxxMem Benchmark

Created by MaxxPI², the MaxxMem benchmark tests your computer’s raw memory performance, combining copy, read, write and latency tests into one global score. This memory benchmark is a classic way to measure bandwidth of a memory subsystem.

MaxxMem uses continuous memoryblocks, sized in power of 2 from 16MB up to 512MB, starting either writing to or reading from it. To enable high-precision memory performance measurement, they both internally work with multiple passes and averages calculations per run.

Further, the main goal was to minimize (CPU) cache pollution on memory reads and to eliminate it (almost completely) on memory writes. Additionally, MaxxMem operates with an aggressive data prefetching algorithm. This all will deliver an excellent judge of bandwidth while reading and writing.

 

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Gaming Benchmarks

Gaming Benchmarks

Futuremark 3DMark (2013)

3DMark v1.1.0
Graphic Settings: Fire Strike Preset
Rendered Resolution: 1920x1680
Test: Specific Physics Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score


3DMark is the brand new cross-platform benchmark from the gurus over at Futuremark. Designed to test a full range of hardware from smartphones to high-end PCs, it includes three tests for DirectX 9, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 hardware, and allows users to compare 3DMark scores with other Windows, Android and iOS devices. Most important to us is the new Fire Strike preset, a DirectX 11 showcase that tests tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Like every new 3DMark version, this test is extremely GPU-bound, but it does contain a heavy physics test that can show off the potential of modern multi-core processors.

Futuremark 3DMark 11

3DMark 11 v1.0.5
Graphic Settings: Performance Preset
Resolution: 1280X720
Test: Specific Physics Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score


3DMark 11 is Futuremark's very latest benchmark, designed to tests all of the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. At the moment, it is lot more GPU-bound than past versions are now, but it does contain a terrific physics test which really taxes modern multi-core processors.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage v1.1.2
Graphic Settings: Performance Preset
Resolution: 1280X1024

Test: Specific CPU Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score

3DMark Vantage is the follow-up to the highly successful 3DMark06. It uses DirectX 10 exclusively so if you are running Windows XP, you can forget about this benchmark. Along with being a very capable graphics card testing application, it also has very heavily multi-threaded CPU tests, such Physics Simulation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which makes it a good all-around gaming benchmark.

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark
Resolution: 1680x1050
Anti-Aliasing: 4X
Anisotropic Filtering: 8X
Graphic Settings: High
Comparison: Particle Performance Metric

Originally intended to demonstrate new processing effects added to Half Life 2: Episode 2 and future projects, the particle benchmark condenses what can be found throughout HL2:EP2 and combines it all into one small but deadly package. This test does not symbolize the performance scale for just Episode Two exclusively, but also for many other games and applications that utilize multi-core processing and particle effects. As you will see the benchmark does not score in FPS but rather in its own "Particle Performance Metric", which is useful for direct CPU comparisons.

X3: Terran Conflict

X3: Terran Conflict 1.2.0.0
Resolution: 1680x1050
Texture & Shader Quality: High
Antialiasing 4X
Anisotropic Mode: 8X
Glow Enabled

Game Benchmark
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

X3: Terran Conflict (X3TC) is the culmination of the X-series of space trading and combat simulator computer games from German developer Egosoft. With its vast space worlds, intricately detailed ships, and excellent multi-threaded game engine, it remains a great test of modern CPU performance.

 

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Voltage Regulation / Power Consumption

Voltage Regulation / Power Consumption

Our voltage regulation testing will focus on the various voltages and the differences encountered between what is selected in the BIOS and what is measured by a digital multi-meter (DMM). This model lacks onboard voltage measurement points so we had to go poking & prodding everywhere to find the appropriate read points, but now that we have located where the read points are, let’s have a look at the results. These measurements were taken at stock system speeds and with C1E, C-STATE, Enhanced SpeedStep, and Turbo Boost enabled in the BIOS. Here are our findings:

First and foremost, the reason we have no DIP5 results for the vCore at idle is because the program tends to list 0.000V when there's no load. This is probably just a small bug that will be rectified in an upcoming update. Nevertheless, as you can see the Z97-A has exceedingly good voltage regulation output. What you set in the bios is pretty much exactly what the board outputs, whether idling or under full load. There is a standard amount vDroop under heavy workloads in the VRIN (ie: the CPU Input Voltage), but that's to be expected and it doesn't actually represent the voltage within the CPU itself. The droop is well within reference specifications anyways, but it would be nice if ASUS included a VRIN Load-Line Calibration (LLC) option in the BIOS for those who want to eliminate the droopage altogether.

Power Consumption

For this section, every energy saving feature was enabled in the BIOS and the Windows power plan was changed from High Performance to Balanced. For our idle test, we let the system idle for 15 minutes and measured the peak wattage through our UPM EM100 power meter. For our CPU load test, we ran Prime 95 V27.9 64-bit In-place large FFTs on all available threads for 15 minutes, measuring the peak wattage via the UPM EM100 power meter. For our overall system load test, we ran Prime 95 In-place large FFTs on all available threads for 15 minutes, while simultaneously loading the GPU with OCCT v4.4.0 GPU DX11 stress test at 1680x1050 with a 300 FPS Limit.

This motherboard impressed us with its low default idle draw, which is about 10 watts less than we have seen on many comparable Z87 models. Under full load, the overall numbers are very much inline we what would expect from a fully featured motherboard such as this one. With an overclocked system the power consumption is really in the hands on the user, and it can be easily managed by just paying close attention to the vCore level and making use of advanced features like optimized VRM phase control.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

Regrettably, we - and the industry in general - are not really in a position to properly impress you with the capabilities of this new generation of motherboards. The addition of the M.2 slot and the SATA Express ports to the Z97 chipset are pretty darn cool, but there is a distinct lack of devices that can properly show off their potential. This is one of those rare cases where the carriage has come before the horse. As a result of this - and the lack of a new processor series that might otherwise distract us from this issue - the Z97 is definitely going to be a hard sell for some. As we have stated previously, current Haswell/Z87 owners can definitely sit tight and feel confident in their hardware. At worst, they can just upgrade their system with a blazing PCI-Express SSD if they start feeling the need for I/O speed.

However, those with older setups though should take a hard look at these new Z97 motherboards. Not only are you getting early access to the high performance storage interfaces that will become common place over the next few years, but you're getting a platform that is compatible with the upcoming Haswell refresh as well as the 5th generation Intel Core processors.

The best part is, as this ASUS Z97-A motherboard clearly proves, you don't even need to spend a lot of money to get a truly excellent 9-Series motherboard. For $150 USD, you are getting a motherboard with solid DIGI+ 8-phase CPU power design, a high-speed M.2 slot and SATA Express port, a bunch of SATA and USB connectivity, CrossFire and SLI capabilities, a high-quality Intel GbE NIC, DisplayPort/DVI/HDMI/VGA video outputs, an excellent BIOS, and some pretty slick software. Frankly, the only place were the specs are less than ideal is in the use of the older Realtek ALC892 audio CODEC, which is a generation behind the very latest ALC1150 part used on similarly priced models from competing manufacturers. Having said that, at least until we've tested a few of those models, we aren't willing to overlook everything the Z97-A motherboard does right just for potentially better audio ouput.

The aesthetics are much improved over the last generation, though some will still recoil in horror at the muted gold heatsinks and brown-ish PCB. The circular chipset heatsink is definitely avant-garde, and not something we can remember ever seeing before. The overall layout of the motherboard is great, but as we demonstrated in the 'Hardware Installation' section, depending on the size of your heatsink, the orientation in which it is installed, and which side of the heatsink the fan(s) is located, you can potentially run into clearance issues with memory modules with tall heatspreaders. It should be mentioned that this isn't an issue that is isolated to this model, we encounter it consistently on most LGA1150 motherboards due to our somewhat bulky heatsink / RAM combo.

At default settings, the single-threaded CPU and memory performance were excellent, however its multi-threaded performance was a bit lower than we've seen on some previous Z87 motherboards. Having said that, this is because ASUS seems to be using the reference Intel-specified Turbo Mode profiles, whereas other manufacturers have been known to "tweak" Turbo a bit and utilize the same maximum CPU multiplier no matter the load. We'll have to see whether this is still true once we get at least one of every manufacturers 9-Series motherboards in our hands. Having said that, with manually set settings, and all thing being equal, this motherboard exhibited excellent performance, equalling and in some cases surpassing all previously tested LGA1150 motherboards.

As we boasted about in the Overclocking Results section, this motherboard has some truly excellent automatic overclocking capabilities. The two auto-overclocking options, one in the BIOS and one software-based, differ greatly in their approaches but we can appreciate their distinct purposes. Most importantly though, our results and experiences indicate that they both work exceedingly well. The more in-depth TPU implementation pushed our i7-4770K up to 4.7GHz with between 1.275V to 1.40V. This is still a fair bit of voltage, but it is much less than we have seen in the past, and it came to within 100Mhz of our manual overclock. Speaking of which, our manual overclocking endeavours were easy and fruitful. We weren't quite able to achieve new heights, but that's to be expected since our CPU and memory kit have limits that have proven insurmountable across many other motherboards.

In conclusion, the ASUS Z97-A is the ideal choice for the price conscious buyer who is not willing to give up any of the features or capabilities that you would want from a next generation motherboard.