ASUS P8Z77-V Premium Review: A Bentley Among Motherboards
by Ian Cutress on August 13, 2012 10:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Asus
- Z77
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly donating hardware for our test bed:
OCZ for donating the Power Supply and USB testing SSD
Micron for donating our SATA testing SSD
G.Skill for donating our memory kits
ASUS for donating AMD GPUs and some IO testing kit
and ECS for donating NVIDIA GPUs
Test Setup
| Processor |
Intel Core i7-3770K ES 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 3.5 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards |
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ASRock Z77 Extreme6 ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional ASUS P8Z77-V Pro ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe ASUS P8Z77-V Premium Biostar TZ77XE4 Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H Gigabyte GA-Z77MX-D3H MSI Z77A-GD65 |
| Memory | G.Skill F3-19200CL9Q-16GBZMD |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series |
| Cooling | Intel All-in-One Liquid Cooler |
| Hard Drive | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed - CoolerMaster Lab V1.0 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Thunderbolt Testing | LaCie Little Big 240GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | OCZ Vertex 3 240GB with SATA->USB Adaptor |
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply, while in a dual 7970 GPU configuration. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, which is suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.
Power consumption on the Premium is markedly higher than any other Z77 motherboard we have tested. This is attributed presumably to the extra controllers on board - the PLX 8747 and the Thunderbolt controller perhaps being the culprits if they are unable to power gate themselves down, as well as the mSATA SSD. The ASUS P8Z77-V Premium also features an enhanced power phase system to maintain stability, which may be another factor.
Note: In our future PLX 8747 review, we find that these power results are a common sight on PLX 8747 motherboards.
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damianrobertjones - Monday, August 13, 2012 - link
I'd say that in the next five years I'll buy... 0 Thunderbolt peripherals. Heck I've only just been bothered to buy my first USB3 thumb drive. Others, however, will jump all over it to be special or actually have a 'genuine' use.philosofool - Monday, August 13, 2012 - link
Stopped reading at "$450," but it was interesting to learn that a person could spend that much on a PC motherboard.stjoker69 - Monday, August 13, 2012 - link
So to nit pit, but I the noun Asus is singular. "ASUS have gone for the additional extras" should be ASUS has gone for the additional extras.Visual - Tuesday, August 14, 2012 - link
Re-read your first sentence, and tell us if it makes any sense. Then consider again if you should be one to give people grammar lessons."ASUS" is a corporation name, corporations are groups of people, that means "ASUS" is a collective noun, so plural verbs can be used with it just fine.
IanCutress - Tuesday, August 14, 2012 - link
This is a US vs. UK thing. Here in the UK, collective nouns are plural.Ian
Powerlurker - Tuesday, August 14, 2012 - link
In the UK and most of the Commonwealth, "ASUS have" would be the correct usage.Googer - Monday, August 13, 2012 - link
I am disappointed in the lack of PS/2 support which does have it's advantages over USB. Especially for us Vintage Keyboard Lovers.Googer - Monday, August 13, 2012 - link
There is room on the back of that I/O panel for PS/2. I've used USB keyboard adapters and its not the same as native PS/2 support. If having PS/2 on a motherboard bothers you, then don't use it and it will likely disable it's self in P.O.S.T.dawp - Tuesday, August 14, 2012 - link
for $450 I would expect that it would at least match my sabertooth x58 @ 5 years.I like that it does have dual band wifi/bluetooth but I don't think I will ever spend that kind of cash on a board
cjb110 - Tuesday, August 14, 2012 - link
One comment about the temperature measurements, as it keeps being mentioned about the varying ambient conditions. Could you not change to a delta reading? So as to remove ambient from the issue? Obviously extreme variations in ambient should still be mentioned.Bit-Tech.net do this on their reviews and it seems to make a lot of sense.