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 In The Box
Zotac packages, in terms of dimensions, rarely go beyond the width and length of the motherboard itself – approximately 17cm x 17cm. As such, all the additional gear has to be piled on top of the board. In previous reviews of Zotac products, more often than not we do get a good selection in the box to play with. In terms of the Z77-ITX WiFi, we get:
User Manual
Driver CD
Rear IO Shield
Four SATA Cables
Two WiFi Antenna
mDP to DP Connector
8-pin CPU Extension Cable
USB 3.0 Rear Bracket
For a mITX package, this is a substantial amount in the box – the four SATA cables take care of all the SATA connectivity on board, and the USB 3.0 bracket allows the onboard USB 3.0 header to be used in the event of no USB 3.0 in the case. The mDP to DP cable is also beneficial such that users do not need to go out and purchase their own. The 8-pin CPU power extension cable is rather a necessity given the location of the 8-pin CPU power port positioning.
Zotac Z77-ITX WiFi Software
Motherboard manufacturers can put similar hardware to each other on their products, but what separates the top tier from those chasing the pack is the software package on board. At a bare minimum, we usually expect a form of fan control software and a BIOS update tool. With a little more time and effort we may get a series of overclock options, and then we can spiral off into enhancements on current software or bring in more features as required. Unfortunately Zotac falls down on all accounts, by virtue of the fact that there is no software.
Starting with the install disk, we have no option to install all the drivers necessary for the board in one fail swoop. Each option has to be selected individually – even the Intel drivers which have a switch that allows for a silent install.
Under ‘Utility’ we get USB Charger, and while clicking this does install ‘software’, we get nothing in the way of an interface to tell us what it does or if it is working. What amazes me with this package is that despite the use of Realtek NICs, we do not even get any Realtek ‘Network’ software included in the box in order to manage our network connections.
It is hard to pinpoint the exact cause of the software issues. Either the person in charge of making these decisions just is not aware of the competition, or more than likely there is not enough staff to make all the changes. They could be too busy with new products to keep the company going, rather than build a strong foundation with which to build future products on.
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mike_b - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
Interesting article, but I have to ask why would someone spend more for a Z77 chipset when using 'just' an i3? Surely a much cheaper H61 chipset could do the job admirably, and at much lower cost.Z77 makes sense if you're overclocking, which is excluded from this test...
IanCutress - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
H61 has no chipset USB 3.0, no chipset SATA 6 Gbps, and you are limited to PCIe 2.0. H61 is also technically limited to one single sided DIMM per channel, and no SATA RAID. There's also SRT to consider, that would be advantageous with the ASRock and the mSATA on the rear.Ian
mike_b - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
It might make an interesting comparison to see what net advantage is gained with the added features of the Z77 chipset compared with the H61. If budgets are limited the ~100 dollar cost difference between the Z77 and H61 mainboards makes a big difference; that money saved could be put into something which makes more of a performance difference (SSD rather than HDD for example).Anandtech is one of the best tech sites around, you guys do a great job. I do sometimes see though an emphasis on more expensive products when in terms of real-world performance you could get almost the same thing at a much cheaper price. Might be worth mentioning somewhere.
Not least because with yet another new socket coming with Haswell all these 1155 boards will be seen as out of date soon anyway.
IanCutress - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
Once we get into the swing with Haswell, we will hopefully covering the whole spectrum. Though it is worth noting that motherboard manufacturers, want to put their best foot forward, and would prefer their halo/channel boards get covered before their OEM / low end offerings. Hence this is why you rarely see many mainstream reviews that are not from forums dedicated to the market segment and users testing their own equipment. We are hoping to rectify the balance in due course. If there are any specific products you might want us to test or examine, drop me an email and I'll see what I can put in my schedule (as full as it is[!]) :)Ian
StormyParis - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
This is a major issue, not limited to motherboards: whenever I'm looking for something middle of the road or outright cheap, I can't find reviews.These Z77 MBs are a nice example: even though I'm recommending/building PCs regularly, most of them mini-ITX, I never came across a use case for Z77. Nobody apart from teens that still have something to prove overclocks anymore. People who want to do multi-GPU get a big case, and a big board. Are we supposed the extrapolate that the makers of good Z77 boards also make good H77 and H61 boards ?
I understand you've got to make do with what you're given by the OEMs. And that reviews was very good, as usual. Pity it is irrelevant ?
Tech-Curious - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
That's an interesting observation. I have to say, I never noticed a significant lack of coverage for low-to-mid-range components (either in general or on Anandtech in particular), until this Fall, when I was in the market for a lower end motherboard.I guess I just always gravitated to higher end mobos before. Or maybe the coverage for such products was more comprehensive years ago. My memory's foggy, so it's hard to say.
In any case, motherboards appear to be the exception. If anything, I think the internet has generally grown more bullish on low-to-mid-range CPUs and GPUs in recent years (probably, in part, as a result of the stagnating console situation, which results in stagnating system requirements for games).
But all of that rambling aside, yeah. It'd be nice to see more diverse motherboard analysis. When I bought a b75 a couple of months ago, I literally couldn't find a review for that chipset. It wasn't a big deal; it's not like b75's features are any great mystery, after all -- but it is a little nettlesome to trip over sixty bajillion z77 reviews when there's nary peep about any other chipset.
In other news, Ian's review is a good one -- and given that I've been a faithful user of Asus motherboards for the last 15 years, it's nice to see them take home the prize. :)
Etern205 - Saturday, January 5, 2013 - link
My guess would be, why review a cheap board when majority of the readers here won't even bother buying it?And as for Asus boards, I've heard, they do something called based-line features. This means all boards from the bottom of the range to the top (Intel B75-Z77) will have the same base-line features, other features are just added like BT, WiFi, extra lan, etc.
Tech-Curious - Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - link
Yes, I think the issue is that (at least with respect to Intel chipsets) low-end motherboards don't support overclocking. So they're both less interesting to review (fewer measurable differences in performance among different models), and they're less appealing to the presumed audience of sites like Anandtech.Still, the B75 is a perfectly good chipset. If you aren't heavily invested in overclocking, z77's advantages are likely wasted on you. Personally, I'm well beyond my overclocking days; I just don't have the time or the patience to go through the almost endless tuning process anymore. (Even if you find a stable OC at the outset, it can become unstable later, and/or a given application might expose instability that stress testing didn't, weeks or even months down the road).
jonjonjonj - Friday, January 4, 2013 - link
just cause you don't overclock doesn't mean other people don't. why wouldn't you? because you want to get the fastest cpu that you can afford means you have something to prove? some people are just idiots.Zap - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
But there isn't a $100 difference between H61 and Z77. There is a cheaper Gigabyte Z77 ITX board that's only around $60 more than the cheapest H61 ITX board, and it was even on sale recently for another $13 off making it less than $50 difference.Alternately one can go the H77 ITX route and get all the Z77 goodies except for overclocking, for around $30 less than the cheapest Z77 ITX. I think $30 more than H61 is reasonable for those extra features, plus guaranteed out-of-the-box BIOS support for Ivy Bridge.
I do agree with your (mike_b) first post regarding the choice of CPU used. Ian Cutress, didn't you have a spare K CPU laying around? There are so many people building overclocked ITX rigs these days. I did in a Silverstone SG05 with low profile air cooler to hit 4.2GHz. Plenty of others use the Bitfenix Prodigy and liquid cooling to hit clocks normally reserved for ATX rigs. Another review site (Tweaktown) tested overclocking on Z77 ITX boards and the ASRock hit near 4.8GHz. THAT'S what I want to see.
Of course this AnandTech roundup has some very useful information too, such as DPC latency tests and POST times. Keep up the good work there! But please, know your audience. Next time if the board is supposed to be overclockable, test that feature.
Maybe there can be a companion article about overclocking and heatsink clearance? Would be a shame to not overclock this nice collection of Z77 ITX boards.