Haswell Z87 Motherboard Preview: 50+ Motherboards from ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock, MSI, ECS, Biostar and EVGA
by Ian Cutress on May 22, 2013 5:00 PM ESTIn an industry where Intel is continually putting more elements onto the CPU, the motherboard manufacturers have to innovate to differentiate themselves from each other. As a result we now have a number of gaming ranges and overclocking ranges to choose from. Of course motherboard manufacturers also have SIs to consider, some of which require specific connectors on various models.
There are a number of features I want to get my hands stuck into. Having the first motherboards with 802.11ac is going to be interesting for sure. Other features such as the ASUS OC Panel, the Maximus VI Hero, the Gigabyte OPAMP and x8/x4/x4 + x4 PCIe layout, the ASRock Waterproof coating and LCD screen, the MSI XPower, the EVGA one, and those ECS buttons are all piquing my interest.
We are not long to Haswell. What are you most interested in?
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MartinT - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
It's strange to think of chosing your last ever motherboard, but this generation has that kind of feeling to me.araczynski - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
i look forward to finding a side by side complete line spec comparison some day. always hated trying to make a decision on a mobo since they each started spewing out a dozen parts to do the same thing. probably won't hurt to just wait and let the early adopters deal with the bugs either.Creig - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
No mention of the the Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H?http://www.pcauthority.com.au/Gallery/342169,exclu...
n0x1ous - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
Love this article. Great job giving us an overview and images of the ranges. Gigabyte gets the nod from me as usual for aesthetics and a much better looking UEFI bios than the Z77 range.Kougar - Thursday, May 23, 2013 - link
The VRM & mosfets was intriguing to read about. If GB is using IR3550 mosfets in the UD5 and ASUS isn't even matching them in its Workstation class motherboard, then I naturally wonder what other PWM & related power delivery choices they differ on. Does GB use them for the memory, chipset, and anything else?
Based on google each single IR chip runs $3 in 10K unit quantities.... no wonder ASUS is using alternatives? Good primer on the IR3550's at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fl1iFtOLKU
Rovek - Friday, May 24, 2013 - link
i`m interested if i can overclock an Intel Core i5-4570 to 4GHz on a 100 EURO MBAdirzv - Sunday, May 26, 2013 - link
Is there any motherboard that supports 4 displays out of the box? I'm not into gaming, 3D performance is zero for me. I just need 4 monitors for multiple financial application. I'll probably buy the 4770k and i like my system as silent as possible. I would really like to get rid of the video card, which is the loudest component in my systememperius - Thursday, June 6, 2013 - link
Hehe I know what your up to, I also need the same setup. I doubt a mobo has 4 display out without any mods to it that may reduce performance significantly and look tacky. But yet again it's either a single graphics card with 4 displays out or perhaps, in the near close future, Thunderbolt and later daisy chain 4 displays......Bad213Boy - Thursday, May 30, 2013 - link
How could you not mention MSI’s Ceasefire which is infact a swtich that can disable an unused expansion slot so that it can transfer the extra lanes to an occupied slot for full use. This is huge IMO. I haven't heard of any other motherboard doing this.Dil2020 - Sunday, August 4, 2013 - link
Since someone at anandtech has gone to all this trouble of providing details of various motherboards, could someone please answer a simple question:Does the ASUS Z87-WS supports ECC memory?
It does support Xeon processors.