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Asus Z97-A

Intel Z97 Express: Five Enthusiast Motherboards, £115 to £130
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Asus is so excited about SATA-Express (and its potential for differentiation) that the firm developed its own “Hyper Express” drive enclosure to leverage two mSATA SSDs against the new interface. We could have simply configured a couple of our own 2.5” SSDs in RAID using the chipset’s native interface, but that would have required two 2.5” drive bays.

Lacking added-in SATA or USB controllers, the Z97-A places four of the Z97’s six USB 3.0 ports on the I/O panel along with two of the chipset’s USB 2.0 ports. Higher up that panel are DisplayPort, HDMI, VGA, and DVI-D outputs that interface with the processor's GPU, which can drive three independent monitors.

The two PCIe 2.0 lanes saved by not adding a bunch of extra controllers are instead sent to the bottom PCIe x16 slot. I wouldn’t recommend using that slot for any sort of multi-GPU array, though it's still suitable for lower-bandwidth applications like building a display wall or even dedicating an older board to PhysX acceleration.

In spite of its relative simplicity, the Z97-A does eventually run out of PCIe lanes as it's filled with devices. The M.2 slot, for example, uses the same lanes as the two PCIe x1 slots, and that’s probably why Asus disables M.2 by default. Focus instead shifts towards keeping the two PCIe lanes of SATA Express open, since the company wants to be on the leading edge of SATA-E's development.

Asus-exclusive features like TPU (automatic overclocking), EPU (energy-saving underclocking), and MemOK (stability-enhanced memory setting) are still addressed by on-board buttons and switches. But Asus adds one more firmware-modifying piece of hardware in its EZ-XMP switch. New builders who might be afraid of UEFI menus can now enable this overclocking technology without losing their nerve, and commercial builders can enable full memory performance without concern that their customers might reset it.

The Z97-Z includes four SATA cables, an SLI bridge, and some front-panel connector extenders that ease the bundling of loose cable ends (such as Power, Reset, and LED).

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    Putolev , 14 May 2014 09:28
    Sorry to say but this "review" didn't bring anything worthwile to me at all. If you take a certain price range and compare the products found there, they ought to be quite similar, right? Well then there's no surprise if no great differences are to be found. Like the reviewer stated, the features make the difference between like the great deal with Gamecaster (which has no value to me at all).
    What I found lacking is the reviewing of those features like software (audio, fan control etc.), VRM quality, "other stuff".
    Now what is this "other stuff" really? Which motherboard has the best "other stuff"? I didn't get it from the review.
    Apart from the very simple introduction to the software and hardware, I can't really make what's better between Gigabyte and MSI, the one's I'm interested in. MSI has better UEFI, I understood but how is the software? How many VRM phases and their quality? Is MSI's audio suite better than GB's?
    These are what make the products apart in the same price range but finding the value leader with good explanations for why was not possible from this article despite it's title.