Intel Z87 Motherboard Review with Haswell: Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock and ASUS
by Ian Cutress on June 27, 2013 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- MSI
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- Asus
- Haswell
- Z87
- Shark Bay
- Lynx Point
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
| Test Setup | |
| Processor |
Intel Core i7-4770K Retail 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 3.5 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards |
ASRock Z87 Extreme6/AC ASUS Z87-Pro Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming |
| Cooling |
Corsair H80i Thermaltake 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 terms of power consumption in our roundup, the Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H takes the crown in all factors, with Idle and Long Idle being 10-20W lower than the ASRock. All boards get under 500W during Metro.
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 ASUS Z87-Pro sneaks in at under 10 seconds which is a great achievement, with the ASRock under 12 seconds. The Gigabyte almost hits that 12 second ideal line, whereas the MSI BIOS has to be stripped of all controllers to get near the Gigabyte. Overall boot times seem to be better than Ivy Bridge, however.
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Mr Perfect - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
I was wondering the same thing. If all shipping Haswell boards have the faulty USB3, then this is a non-starter.Avalon - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Is it just me, or are these boards too expensive?The Asrock Z77 Extreme6 is $155 on Newegg, $169 w/Thunderbolt. Asrock Z87 Extreme6 is $220-$20 MIR.
The Gigabyte Z77 UD3H is $140 on Newegg. Gigabyte Z87 UD3H is $180.
You get a couple extra USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb slots and Haswell support, but I don't understand how that makes mid range boards at best command low high-end prices.
Mr Perfect - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
My guess is it's just new vs old products at this point. The Z77 boards are old news and have had a year to fall in price. Meanwhile, the Z87s are shiny new toys that some people will pay a premium for.Rob94hawk - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
"As it stands the MSI BIOS looks like a higgledy-piggledy jumble to a new overclocker."Going from X38/775 to this I still haven't figured out what everything does.
nsiboro - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
Ian, kindly provide info/links to ASUS Z87-Pro 3xxx series BIOS.The website product page (download) is only showing 1xxx series BIOS.
Thanks.
blackie333 - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
Could someone please check/confirm whether USB 3.0 S3 wakeup bug also affects devices connected via additional(ASMedia 1074) onboard USB 3.0 hub ports available on Asus Z87-PRO stepping C1 board?Some people are suggesting that only USB 3.0 ports directly connected to Z87 chipset are affected by the bug.
chizow - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
The PCIe lane config was the biggest deciding factor for me. I will only ever run 2-way SLI, so I wanted to maintain x8/x8 config for my 2x primary GPUs but wanted the flexibility of that 3rd slot for a PCIe SSD or PCIe PhysX card.Only the Asus and Gigabyte options offered that lane config, from what I saw both the MSI and Asrock designs go with x8/x4/x4 3.0 rather than x8/x8 3.0 + x4 2.0
The Gigabyte UD range was pretty vanilla, but I was OK with that, the Asus boards, although solid, offered a lot of features I would never need or use, like Wi-Fi.
I ended up with the Gigabyte Z87X-UD4 as it was cheaper than the comparable Asus offering Z87-Pro by quite a bit.
pandemonium - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
I love the thoroughness of these articles. Excellent job, guys!"ASUS’ reasoning is such that some of the Haswell i7-4770K CPUs, the ones that only just get into this category, will throttle the CPU speed when using the default Intel CPU cooler when MCT is enabled."
Who - buying a 4770K - will be using a stock cooler? What kind of rationality is that garbage? >.>
blackie333 - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
There can be some, maybe those waiting for a better cooler. But the question is why Intel is including cooler which isn't capable to cool the CPU and we still have to pay for it? It should be able to do it's job at least on default frequency.Anyway this problem is IMHO more an effect of Haswell heat transfer issue than poor quality of the stock cooler. If Intel could fix the CPU overheating issue the cooler should be good enough.
ven - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
why is that PCIe hub is present, many will prefer having a single device that will utilize all the bandwidth than having multiple devices choking with shared bandwidth, six SATA 6Gpbs is enough for most, with flex i/o and that hub removed gives x7 lanes and given this a Desktop board,msata will not be missed that much, so we can get tri-way SLI, i am little surprised that no manufactures choose this configuration.