Z77 mITX Round-Up: Five of the Best – MSI, Zotac, ASRock, EVGA and ASUS

EVGA Z77 Stinger Conclusion

EVGA has a reputation for being something a little special.  The fan base is loyal, and despite the size of the company they have upgrade paths for their hardware (the EVGA Step-Up program) and deal with all RMA requests personally rather than through the reseller.  The forums are always full of posts, and a lot of members also contribute their hardware and spare time for distributed computing projects such as Folding@Home or BOINC.  EVGA’s main product line is in NVIDIA graphics cards, and their high end models, although expensive, are often pre-overclocked and sell like hot cakes.  They hire top well-known overclockers to showcase how capable their products can be in the right hands.

The motherboard side is less lucrative.  EVGA’s market share in the motherboard segment is tiny compared to ASUS and Gigabyte, and still small compared to MSI and Biostar.  For a given chipset they rarely release more than three motherboards (e.g. X79 SLI, X79 FTW, X79 Classified or Z77 FTW, Z77 Stinger), and those motherboards are often late to launch and come with some easy-to-spot issues.  Every so often they come out with something special (EVGA SR-2) which is hard to ignore.

When I approached EVGA to request a review sample of the Stinger, I had seen the leaked images online and it looked like a good product.  I even posted them on AnandTech.  When the sample came through the door and I saw the price, I was a little taken aback.  $200 puts it as the most expensive mITX board on the market, even more so than the ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe which uses a daughter PCB for power delivery.  At the $200 price point, it was going to be a tough sell to all but EVGA enthusiasts.

For the green we get some ‘extra’ compared to most other mITX boards on the market.  This means an Intel NIC, a total of six USB 3.0 ports, two more SATA 6 Gbps (in the form of eSATA), the socket placed at the top rather than the bottom, three fan headers and power/reset buttons with a debug LED.  Unfortunately, most of the cheaper boards offer better audio than the Realtek ALC889, they offer a WiFi module included in the product, more video output connectivity, some offer an mSATA, a mini-PCIe, and substantially more IO on the back panel.

BIOS wise EVGA is at a disadvantage due to the size of the company, but the lack of XMP options in the release BIOS does not help much.  Despite the two years since graphical BIOSes came into force, I have been told that an implementation may be coming with Haswell (and hopefully with a print screen option).  The software side with EVGA also falls against the same hurdle, with only one utility that offers little – no BIOS update feature, no fan control, no network control, no power delivery control. 

In terms of performance, all is right with the EVGA Z77 Stinger.  We got a fair representation across the range of benchmarks with no out-of-the-ordinary bursts or dips apart from the 192 kHz audio test fail due to the ALC889.

As mentioned before, the EVGA Z77 Stinger is a hard sell, and at $200 it is not really doing itself any favors when compared side-by-side with the competition.  There are motherboards out there that offer a lot more in terms of usability and experience, but with EVGA we do get that Step-Up program and direct dealing with RMA.  Are these differences worth the $50-$55 jump up from an ASRock or an MSI?  If the Z77 Stinger was around the same price as the Zotac, it might be worth a punt.