Asus Z87-A review
Excellent performance and a wide range of ports and expansion slots make this a great Intel board for Haswell processors
Specifications
LGA1150, ATX, Intel Z87 chipset, supports: 4th generation Intel Celeron, Pentium, Core i3/i5/i7
We tested the Z87-A with a Core i5-4670K and 4GB of DDR3 RAM running at 1600MHz. It scored 115 overall in our multimedia benchmarks, which is actually a few points higher than what we’d normally expect to see from this setup. This puts it just ahead of the similarly-priced Gigabyte Z87-D3HP and even the more expensive Z87-Pro, so you can be sure the Z87-A will give you great multimedia performance.
Even better, the Z87-A comes with several extra features to make it more user-friendly than its rivals. We particularly liked its onboard DirectKey that lets you access its easy-to-use BIOS straight from standby and its MemOK! Button and LED light that helps with troubleshooting, and Asus’s bundled Q-Connector kit was a godsend when trying to connect our wires to the board’s front panel.
The Asus Z87-A is a tiny bit more expensive than its rivals, but not so much to cause concern given its brilliant performance and range of expansion ports. It wins a deserved Best Buy award.
Basic Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Rating | ***** |
| Processor socket | LGA1150 |
| Form factor | ATX |
| Size | 220x305mm |
| Processor support | 4th generation Intel Celeron, Pentium, Core i3/i5/i7 |
| Processor external bus | 100MHz |
| Chipset north bridge | Intel Z87 |
| Chipset south bridge | Intel Z87 |
| Passively-cooled north bridge | yes |
| Integrated graphics | No |
| Supported memory type | DDR3 |
| Maximum memory speed | PC3-24000 |
| Memory slots | 4 |
| Maximum memory | 32GB |
| Dual-channel support | yes |
Buying Information | |
| Price | £100 |
| Supplier | http://www.dabs.com |
| Details | www.asus.com |
Internal Ports | |
| Power connectors | 1x 24-pin ATX, 1x 8-pin ATX |
| PCI-E x16 slots | 3 |
| Dual graphics architecture | Quad-GPU SLI, quad-GPU CrossFire X |
| PCI-E x4 slots | 0 |
| PCI-E x1 slots | 1 |
| PCI slots | 2 |
| Fan headers | 5 |
| Floppy ports | 0 |
| IDE ports | 0 |
| Serial ATA ports | 0 |
| RAID chipset (max disks) | Intel Z87 (RAID 0, 1, 5, 10) |
Features | |
| Wired network ports | 1x 10/100/1000 |
| Sound (ports) | Realtek ALC892 (6x analogue out, optical S/PDIF out) |
| USB2 ports / headers | 6/8 |
| Firewire ports / headers | 0/0 |
| Legacy ports | PS/2 |
| Other ports | VGA, DVI, DisplayPort, HDMI |
| Cables included | 2x SATA |
| Brackets included | none |
| Software included | none |
Setup and Overclocking | |
| Voltage adjustment | CPU/RAM/Chipset |
| CPU clock max adjustment | 8,000MHz |