Haswell Z87 Motherboard Preview: 50+ Motherboards from ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, MSI, ECS, Biostar and EVGA
by Ian Cutress on May 22, 2013 5:00 PM ESTIn an industry where Intel is continually putting more elements onto the CPU, the motherboard manufacturers have to innovate to differentiate themselves from each other. As a result we now have a number of gaming ranges and overclocking ranges to choose from. Of course motherboard manufacturers also have SIs to consider, some of which require specific connectors on various models.
There are a number of features I want to get my hands stuck into. Having the first motherboards with 802.11ac is going to be interesting for sure. Other features such as the ASUS OC Panel, the Maximus VI Hero, the Gigabyte OPAMP and x8/x4/x4 + x4 PCIe layout, the ASRock Waterproof coating and LCD screen, the MSI XPower, the EVGA one, and those ECS buttons are all piquing my interest.
We are not long to Haswell. What are you most interested in?
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vailr - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
What about DDR4? Will Intel offer a revised chipset (Z88?) for DDR4 + Haswell CPU's later this year?sticks435 - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
No, DDR4 will most likely debut on the new Enthusiast boards (X79 or X89 or X99). It will be either 2014 or 15 before we see it on mainstream boards.Death666Angel - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
Haswell doesn't seem to support DDR4. The memory support is based on the CPU since a few generations back, not the motherboard/chipset anymore. Haswell-E might support DDR4 by the looks of it.Sm0kes - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
Really interested to see if Thunderbolt can make any meaningful advances..... if not this year, i suspect this will be dead technology. Was really looking forward to seeing eGPU's become a reality.xTRICKYxx - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
Thunderbolt only has a PCI x4 access so a AMD Radeon HD 6670 is going to fully saturate it....I want to believe Intel will fix this so eGPU's can succeed!
Jaybus - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
Haswell uses the same x4 configuration, but with PCIe 3.0 and a bandwidth of 20 Gbps. Since that matches the current max Thunderbolt spec, why would they use more than 4 lanes? There simply isn't a lot of headroom for going > 20 Gbps over copper without limiting the cable length to only a few cm..They are working on silicon photonics to integrate a chip level optical interconnect to make optical Thunderbolt cheap enough, but until then there just isn't much need for more than 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes.bobbozzo - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
on P1, "Within that is the cost for the chipset (a not-significant cost)"Do you mean not-INsignificant?
thanks for the article!
Death666Angel - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
Well, any of the mATX motherboards look good. My preferred brand is Gigabyte for the good value and performance. Asus usually when I have the money laying around and want a feature or two they offer. AsRock is also good if they are competitive with Gigabyte by being cheaper or offering more for the same money. The other manufacturers I have little experience or dodgy experience with. :DI would like a mATX with good overclocking, Intel NICs, decent onboard sound, 8 SATA connectors and maybe mSATA. I don't need wifi, more than 8 SATA, more than 2 USB 3.0, LCDs, reset/power buttons onboard, SLI/CF support or anything fancy like that.
Egg - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
Am I misinterpreting something, or do post of the lower end boards include PCI? I thought some of them would drop it, as people with the expansion cards that need it often will look for better boards, and it now needs an extra controller.meacupla - Wednesday, May 22, 2013 - link
They fill in the gap between the business (B series) and enthusiast (Z series) chipset.