Z77 mITX Round-Up: Five of the Best – MSI, Zotac, ASRock, EVGA and ASUS
by Ian Cutress on December 31, 2012 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- MSI
- ASRock
- EVGA
- ZOTAC
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
- Z77
- mITX
Zotac Z77-ITX WIFI BIOS
Since the inception of a graphical interface for a BIOS, we have had several attitudes towards the design by motherboard manufacturers:
a) Do Nothing
b) Change the colors and reorganize menus
c) Create a different feel, make the changes easier to comprehend
d) Embrace a graphical BIOS and shift the paradigm to an interactive experience
Ideally, we would want all motherboard manufacturers to take to option (d), allowing all users to have a prod and a play with what could be a very interesting interface. Only two experiences I have had ever come close to (d) – the games given in the early MSI P67 BIOSes, and my brief foray into an Intel Z77 BIOS. Apart from this, we are stuck with (a) to (c) for the time being.
For Zotac, writing a novel BIOS can be tough. Zotac is a relatively small player in the motherboard industry with a single-digit percentage in terms of market share, and I would not be surprised if they employed more than a handful of BIOS engineers that actively upgrade the BIOS. If anything, they are more than likely stuck writing code for new models or releasing patches rather than updating. As a result, Zotac fits firmly in the (b) menu of the list above.
Being in the (b) section is not all bad – Biostar have had a fair crack at it in a similar position and have come out with something just about useable but looks nice (as a personal subjective opinion). For Zotac, and this Z77-ITX WiFi, we get a selection of different colored text on a JPEG/PNG style background:
(Apologies for the quality of the images – Zotac are also one of the few motherboard manufacturers without a ‘F12 – Screen to USB’ button which optimizes this part of the review.)
My main issue with a multicolored background stems from my slight level of colorblindness. It deeply affected my ability to select options in an ECS BIOS a few months back, and while it does not affect me here to the same extent, the effect of having white text over a yellow background without a text border can sometimes make text difficult to see. I would chalk this up as a basic design error (like red text on a green background) systemic of an engineer being told to ‘give the BIOS some style’. It certainly has more style than a white-on-black or white-on-blue BIOS of old, but it is not executed as perfectly as one may have imagined.
As for the functionality of the BIOS itself, the main screen above does a good job of informing the user when they enter the BIOS and land on the ‘Main’ page. We get the motherboard model and BIOS version, CPU information and memory size/speed. All that is missing is perhaps a temperature or voltage (or two).
For overclocking, we get the X-Setting menu:
Rather than an endless list of options, Zotac have decided to place overclocking options in separate menus. Everything voltage related gets placed out in this main menu, but frequency settings are partitioned off into separate CPU, iGPU and Memory menus.
A good thing about the Zotac BIOS is that each option has an associated help description in the top right, and each setting will make sense to any user who has overclocked before. Raise the multiplier, perhaps raise the voltage, adjust LLC + power settings as necessary.
Unfortunately there is a little element of confusion in the Zotac BIOS. Some of the CPU overclock settings listed above are duplicated poorly in the Advanced -> CPU Configuration menu. As you can see below, despite the Core Ratio options being part of this menu, they are not configured properly to take into account the values found in the X-Setting section:
In the Advanced menu, we get the usual array of controller options and configuration sub-menus. The important thing to note is the default setting for SATA ports. In 2012 (and for most of 2011) it has become the de-facto standard to make the SATA Mode for the ports to be AHCI as every HDD and SSD sold today can take advantage of AHCI and a new OS is often installed on a newer system. Either Zotac did not get that memo or someone at HQ is not in the loop with modern system construction, because we get IDE as standard. Please make sure you remember to change this on your new build (and each time you might have to clear the CMOS).
Due to the two fan headers on board, we get a small about of fan control in the BIOS:
The fan control allows for a basic type of gradient to be defined, although as shown above the ‘final’ temperature is not possible to be chosen, suggesting that the BIOS uses the TJMax value of the processor to fully ramp up the fan. The system fan header gets a straight forward constant fan speed at the users’ discretion. [Insert my consistent rant regarding fan settings here.]
The last thing to mention in the BIOS is the boot override feature, which is becoming the norm on most motherboards and I am glad to see Zotac use it. With this feature we can select a single device to boot from as a one-time-only situation – useful for booting from USB.
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Sabresiberian - Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - link
Thanks for the great comparison review!It looks like there is a little mistake in the spec list for the Asus board, which shows it having a mini-PCIe connector. I would love it if it did, but I didn't see it on the board and it isn't mentioned in other spec lists.
It is important to me because I would ideally need connection for both a graphics card and a sound card (which I believe I could do through a mini-PCIe to PCIe x1 adapter if needed). This makes the EVGA Stinger the choice for me here, though the Asus board is the one I would prefer to buy.
I am truthfully a little disappointed in the EVGA board, which seems all too common with EVGA products in general these days. Great support is still there, but I'd rather they build bleeding edge components and not have to find out whether or not their support is as good as people say it is. The Stinger is a good board to be sure, and the Intel LAN alone puts it in the category of "will buy" for me, but I was hoping it would be something that would match or beat the Asus P877-I, and it just doesn't.
Foeketijn - Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - link
When you take overclocking out of the equation, B75 has it all, for the price just a tiny bit north of the old H61 chipset. Support for IB features (1600Mhz DDR3, PCI-e 3.0), Native Sata III, USB 3.0.It wasn't intended for the DIY market but fits the bill perfectly in my opinion. Only the very very few who need to OC, +16Gb ram or multiple SSD's @ full 6 Gb/s need the Z77 chipset.
The only thing is, that us mere mortals can't predict is, if a much cheaper chipset is used, did the OEM also cheapskate on the critical parts to? I would love to see some in-depth component analysis which I see for example, when a PSU is taken apart.
Which components are used? how well is the soldering done, does it still work at a sauna lanparty, etc.
I might be alone in this, but I would find that much more valuable information than all the performance benchmarks together (race to the bottom, be dammed!).
Including the northbridge in the CPU made motherboard and CPU reviews so predictible (or borring).Since then, I'm only interested in stability, ease of installation (nicely covered) and practical use (fan controll, MEM compatibility ect).
<offtopic> Oh I loved the XP-m 2500+ siverpainting 2001 era where you actually could get a noticeable improvement of performance and not necessarily have to sacrifice stability or risk bankruptcy</offtopic>
vanwazltoff - Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - link
i picked up an asus p8z77-i deluxe/wd before christmas and made a beast gaming computer out of it with an i5-3750k OCed to 4.5ghz and a gtx670 =]vanwazltoff - Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - link
*3570kBeaver M. - Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - link
Loved the POST screen measurements and the DPC latency testing. Something you dont see every day. Actually Ive never seen it, and yet I always wanted to know those.However I am not really interested in the Z77s, since they have a horrible layout for my needs. Only the Asus one comes close to what I need, but I just dont buy Asus anymore because of several very bas experiences.
So, I wish you would also test the B75 and H77s.
paksoy - Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - link
I love the features of this Asus mobo, but i want to use it in a really small form factor case like the Antec ISK 110 VESA Case.http://www.anandtech.com/show/6192/antec-isk-110-v...
I'm just worried that the height of the VRAM board would prevent it from using it with this case.
mi1stormilst - Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - link
I still opted for the Gigabyte Z77N and love it...Sivar - Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - link
Does this refer to the ALC889 playing an audio file encoded at 192KHz?If so, does it really matter? Failing a test is never a good thing, but I know of no widely available 192KHz audio source, and such a source would have no benefit, nor would a 96KHz source.
cjs150 - Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - link
I am a happy user of the AS Rock board in a silent HTPC. It works exceptionally well. However it is clear that some work still needs to be done on motherboard design.MSata on back is excellent - now can we have it as SATA 3 because the better MSata SSDs are all Sata 3.
Placement of Sata connectors is often awkward on these boards. On edge and at right angles please.
Similarly I would love it if someone either did the 24 pin ATX power connector at right angles or someone manufactured a right angled converter that did not require de soldering the motherboard connector. Cable management in Mini-OTX is very hard and that would really help.
Finally, careful choice of RAM can eliminate issues Ian had about the closeness of the CPU socket preventing the use of many after market coolers. I use the Samsung green low profie memory, which is so low that any after market cooler can be used (and runs at 1.35v, is an unbelievably good overclocker and reasonably priced!)
romrunning - Wednesday, January 2, 2013 - link
As has been mentioned previously, the H77 chipset is great for those who do not need overclocking. I've used the Intel DH77DF, and I heartily recommend it. Since the DH77DF has an eSATA port (not too common), I've even been able to keep an eSATA dock that I used before USB 3.0 was more readily available. If you install this board into a Fractal Design Node 304 case, you can use all of the SATA ports as well. I've used it with a Silverstone SG05 case, and the loudest part of my setup is the fan on the graphics card (Radeon 7850).One thing I've noticed, though, is the relatively low mic input from the front audio. Not sure if this is common to the Realtek ALC8xx chip series, but even after boosting the gain in Win7 to +30db, it still isn't quite as loud as an older AMD board I previously had (which didn't need a boost at all).