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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HandsomeChow - Wednesday, February 12, 2014 - link
The TUF components used have still to be tested but considering they are willing to backup the board with a five year warranty shows that they won't actually be using average run of the mill mosfets, caps and inductors right? Since it would actually negatively effect them if they use crappy-average quality electronics since it will cost more for them to replace the entire board for defective mosfets or inductors.Plus, the TUF series has one thing no other motherboards have and that is the advance thermal management and monitoring software. Which in my opinion is what stands out the most on the TUF series.
BernardP - Monday, February 3, 2014 - link
It's disappointing they went with the run-of-the-mill Realtek ALC892 audio codec, instead of the better ALC1150.Sivar - Monday, February 3, 2014 - link
The ATX "Sabertooth" model uses an ALC1150.DanNeely - Monday, February 3, 2014 - link
This is a somewhat general question; but is there any easy way to determine if a mobo's large number of USB3 ports are due to additional controllers or just to the use of onboard USB3 hubs?TGressus - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
Manufacturer's website specifications, or product manual.https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/GRYPHON_Z87/#spe...
Teardroop - Monday, February 3, 2014 - link
I get the retail Armor Kit and it already has protectors for all the connectors, ALL! Audio, Video, USB, Ethernet, Internal USB, not just PCI-E and memory... I like it..bigboxes - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
Why do you like it (besides it looking cool and all)?Tjalve - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
So.. No ECC support and no C-series chipset. This is just a regular Asus board with 5 year warrenty and an optional platic cover that do more harm then good. Or am I missing somthing?ShieTar - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
Why would you expect Server-Features from a board labeled "The Ultimate Force"?ShieTar - Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - link
"The Gryphon also offers an additional ‘Fan Overtime’ feature which keeps the fans spinning after the system is shut down in order to allow the equilibration of air inside and outside the case. This can be seen as important in humid climates, where hot air inside the case can cause inside condensation as it cools down."Can somebody explain to me why this would happen? If the air inside the case is just heated up air from the outside, then it absolute water content cannot be over the dew point of the outside air. So when you cool it back down to its original temperature, why would there suddenly be condensation? It's not like there are water reservoirs inside the case to saturate the air.