ASUS TUF Z87 Gryphon Review
by Ian Cutress on February 3, 2014 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Asus
- Z87
- TUF
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with 1250W Gold Power Supplies.
Thank you to G.Skill for providing us with memory kits.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU, Corsair H80i CLC and 16GB 2400C10 memory.
Thank you to ASUS for providing us with the AMD GPUs and some IO Testing kit.
Thank you to ECS for providing us with the NVIDIA GPUs.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with the 500W Platinum Power Supply for mITX testing, BlackHawk Ultra, and 1600W Hercules PSU for extreme dual CPU + quad GPU testing, and RK-9100 keyboards.
Thank you to ASRock for providing us with the 802.11ac wireless router for testing.
| Test Setup | |
| Processor |
Intel Core i7-4770K Retail 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 3.5 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards |
ASRock Z87 Extreme6/AC (ATX) ASRock Z87 OC Formula/AC (ATX) ASRock Z87M OC Formula (mATX) ASRock Z87E-ITX (mITX) ASUS Z87-Pro (ATX) ASUS Maximus VI Impact (mITX) ASUS TUF Z87 Gryphon (mATX) Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H (ATX) Gigabyte Z87X-OC (ATX) MSI Z87-GD65 Gaming (ATX) MSI Z87 Xpower (ATX) MSI Z87I (mITX) |
| Cooling |
Corsair H80i Thermalright TRUE Copper |
| Power Supply |
OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series Corsair AX1200i Platinum PSU |
| Memory |
GSkill TridentX 4x4 GB DDR3-2400 10-12-12 Kit Corsair Vengeance Pro 2x8 GB DDR3 2400 10-12-12 Kit |
| Memory Settings | XMP (2400 10-12-12) |
| Video Cards |
ASUS HD7970 3GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 13.1 NVIDIA Drivers 310.90 WHQL |
| Hard Drive | OCZ Vertex 3 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| USB 2/3 Testing | OCZ Vertex 3 240GB with SATA->USB Adaptor |
| WiFi Testing | D-Link DIR-865L 802.11ac Dual Band Router |
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.
While this method for power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.
In our power consumption test, handling under 500W is standard for a Z87 motherboard, although the result was a little high compared to other boards. OCCT and Long Idle numbers in general were relatively low.
Windows 7 POST Time
Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we are now going to look at the POST Boot Time - this is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows 7 starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.) These results are subject to human error, so please allow +/- 1 second in these results.
The Gryphon falls just short of our goal 12 seconds Windows 7 + dual GPU POST time.
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ReneGQ - Thursday, March 13, 2014 - link
I recently purchased an Asus Motherboard and the problems started from day 1. The drivers update never works, the same for AI Suite III (there´s a lot of updates for this model in Asus webpage). After 2 months I still can´t install BitDefender cause a clock watchdog error.Asus technical support is the worst, mails comes and goes with no solution.
I will not recommend this brand to anyone. The brand has a very good Marketing but the product and the service are very disappointment.
Epimpin - Saturday, November 7, 2015 - link
I literally just had an asus motherboard die on me. It was manufactured in 2003 and has been thru 5 moves, sat outside in the cold wet winter for 8 months and had the ram upgraded like 15 times and went thru 3 CPU upgrades and 3 psu swaps, 5 or 6 RTC batteries, 10 or so bios flashes and countless peripherals installed. The A8N motherboard. I was able to play GTA IV on high settings with an AMD R9 Video Card and an SSD last year. I also have a KFN5-D SLI (Circa 2006) with 2 Opteron 2393 SE Quad Core 3.1ghz Processors in which overclock fine with golden orb 2 heatsinks to 4.0ghz. I plan to have it around for a long time since i had it RMA'd this year with my extended ASUS Server Care package, well worth the $300. This motheboard and proc combo has been stomping every comparable core#/memory/SLi rig for years due to its 8000M/T Controller and FSB. System bus has been matched to processor speed and memory speed across channels giving ZERO bottlenecks. Something that other manufactures have yet to master. Asus is a great company and makes great stuff. I just bought This Z87 and ot it for 46.99 and it came with a 50$ mail in rebate so they paid me to buy it. Today i just bought the TUF Armor kit from Microcenter for 67$ and it has a 30$ mail in rebate so all in all I paid 37.99 for the Asus Gryphon Z87 TUF Armor Edition. Bought an I7 4790 for 239.99, Coolermaster G650M power supply for 64.99 and a 16G kit of 1866 XMP Patriot Viper mem for 42.00 and used my current pair of 120gig Samsung 840's in raid 0 and I have a really sweet system of under 500. Add in 2x AMD R9 295x2's in SLi and this system is going to rip holes in GTA V in Ultra at 4K. So for all of you Ripping on ASUS, You should look at the alternative companies, their products are far inferior to ASUS in manufacturing tech and innovation, ASUS is always CREATING tech that others are doing a piss poor job of emulating. Im my Honest and professional opinion the only other company that is better than or in the same class as ASUS is TYAN and they only make server boards now.