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
ASRock Z77E-ITX BIOS
As already mentioned in the overview to the Z77E-ITX, its BIOS is a step back from the most recent implementations of the BIOS we have seen on the X79 Extreme11 and FM2A85X Extreme6 – instead of that starry background we get the older blue on white indicative of the earlier Z77 products. This is mostly likely due to the mid-2012 release of this motherboard, but going through the history of the ASRock BIOS, there is an evolution taking place:
ASRock H67M-GE/HT
ASRock Z77E-ITX
ASRock X79 Extreme11
Despite the evolution, ASRock have kept the general design constant. This means information like the motherboard model, BIOS version, processor installed, processor speed, memory installed and memory speed are right there on the front menu – useful for anyone wanting this information without loading an OS or opening up the case. All that is missing is perhaps the CPU temperature and CPU fan speeds. If this was all wrapped up in an aesthetic and interactive scenario we would be on to a winner.
With the Z77E-ITX BIOS, the Main screen has access to two functions – the System Browser and the Online Management Guard.
The System Browser shows the motherboard with all the changeable ports highlighted. By rolling the mouse over each of them, it will tell the user what it detects in that port. Thus if a SATA device suddenly stops working, users can check this to make sure the BIOS still recognizes it.
The Online Management Guard is an interesting way to get around the ‘how to keep the kids off the internet when they should be doing schoolwork’ issue – users can select hours of the day at which the network controller will be disabled. Unfortunately the system is easily disabled by going back into the BIOS and either changing the BIOS clock or changing the OMG setup itself. Yes, OMG is an odd name for this feature – “OMG, it’s so easy to disable!”
The main bulk of the options are found in the OC Tweaker menu:
The OC Tweaker menu is arranged into lists of features relating to separate parts of the system. First is the CPU configuration, relating to CPU ratio, BCLK and power limitations. We also have overclocking support for the integrated graphics. Underneath this is the DRAM timing options, which give XMP support or a manual adjustment of the timing ratios. The voltages are further down, and we are given Load Line Calibration options as well with diagrams to show how LLC varies with ‘Level’. Finally there are options to save the current settings for future usage.
The Advanced menu deals with the non-overclocking options: we have access to our SATA/USB configurations, as well as the extra controllers on board and the NB/SB options. In order to flash the BIOS via USB or the Internet, the options are in this menu.
The fan settings are found in the H/W Monitor option along the top, and in keeping with previous ASRock motherboards, the fans are set to 100% by default. This is by no means the best way of presenting the motherboard out of the box, resulting in high noise levels unless the options are changed. The fan options on the Z77E-ITX allow for both fans to have a ‘maximum’ temperature after which the fans are on full, and a target fan speed which sets the fans to that speed below the target temperature.
Elsewhere in the BIOS are boot options and security options. Annoyingly missing is a boot override function, useful for those one-off USB installation scenarios.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
54 Comments
View All Comments
IanCutress - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
Gigabyte wanted their H77 reviewed instead, which we reviewed recently: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6427Athelstan - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
Thanks for the review. I'm curious why you mention the audio chip on all of these board. For the intended purpose, wouldn't the audio be over HDMI, making the onboard audio unused in most cases? Even then, all of the boards have optical out, making the audio chip to have very little to do other than to pass along the bitstream from the media thought the optical connection.IanCutress - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
The audio chip also controls the front panel audio, and even if the audio was going through the HDMI, external speakers for a HTPC may be used via the audio jacks. In my personal usage scenario, my video out is via DVI-D to a 2560x1440 Korean panel via a dGPU, meaning all my audio still goes through the normal audio jacks. The other reason is that if I did not mention it, someone in the comments would ask why wasn't the audio chip mentioned. There is a price difference between the ALC889, ALC892 and ALC898, though manufacturers obviously get these on bulk deals (or at a discount when bought with the Realtek 8111E/F) and I am not privy to that information.Ian
Taft12 - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
Speaking of audio, could you let us know the differences between those 3 Realtek audio chipsets? Is there any sound quality difference, or is it only features?mczak - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
The 892 has somewhat crappy ADC/DACs quality-wise (that said most likely signal routing etc. on the board will have a much bigger effect on sound quality than the quality of the DACs, so using a higher quality chip can still easily result in worse quality than using a cheap chip with more care taken). The 889 and 898 seem quite similar there on paper.I think just about the only thing you'd really miss is the dolby digital live / dts connect features (encode multichannel audio to digital if you're using the digital outputs). But these are pure software features, so you can get them with the 892 as well - I believe though the board manufacturers are more likely to license them with the more expensive chips (I don't know if you could "upgrade" your chip with unofficial means there...). Realtek actually seems to list different ordering numbers depending on these features - interestingly there while all 3 of these chips are listed as a version without any of DDL/DTS Connect, only the 889 has a version with both of them, while the 892 only has a version with DTS Connect, and the 898 only has the version without them - the datasheet still lists those features as optional however.so maybe they just stopped using different ordering numbers (the 889 clearly is the oldest of the 3).
Athelstan - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
*grins* Good point. If you don't mention it someone else would be asking for it.Stacey Melissa - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
I'm running the ASUS board, and installed the AI Suite for a different ASUS Z77 board in order to get access to Fan Expert 2, which has far better fan control than v.1. Wish I could remember which Z77 board it was, but all I did was check the download pages for various Z77 boards to find one that included AI Suite with Fan Expert 2.IanCutress - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
MSI include a program as part of the package to update the software, making sure you have the latest available. ASUS and Gigabyte need to do this ASAP, so people can take advantage of things like Fan Expert 2 without having to visit the website. System integrators often just install the drivers and software on the CD when selling a system, and then the user never updates it unless told to by either (a) friends or (b) the software itself.Ian
mfenn - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
Am I the only one who is getting tired of the liberal copy-pasting of content between motherboard (and SSD) reviews on this site? I don't need to waste my time reading about the MSI design competition in every single review.I understand the need to provide background information to readers who may not peruse every single review, but that's why Tim invented the hyperlink. Link to the old review or to a purpose-built "company profile" page.
Sabresiberian - Tuesday, January 1, 2013 - link
Adding info some may be familiar with is preferable to leaving it out. If you don't want to read it, then I suggest you just skim or skip it entirely. :)