ASUS Z97-Pro WiFi AC Review

ASUS Z97-Pro WiFi AC In The Box

As mentioned previously, this motherboard is available in two versions: with or without the WiFi module. The price difference goes towards the module and the antenna, with the rest of the package being the same. Being $188 and $200, one might imagine that motherboards in this price bracket bring something extra into the package, however the dynamic for 9-series seems to have changed. Previously with two USB 3.0 headers, one might expect a USB 3.0 bracket, but now we have cases with two USB 3.0 connectors for four ports on the case, so motherboard manufacturers are avoiding this add-on. With the mainstream series also, there is not much incentive to go beyond a flexi-SLI bridge unless the motherboard uses a PLX 8747 chip for 3x or 4x SLI. Because SATA Express is now here, one might imagine that SATAe cables will start being part of the package, but a lack of drives on the market is stagnating this advancement.

In the Z97-Pro package we have:

Driver Disk
Manual
Rear IO Shield
Four SATA Cables
Flexi SLI Bridge
Q-Connectors
WiFi Antenna (WiFi AC version only)

With a total of 8 SATA ports (two being part of SATAe), only four SATA cables may cover most users but not all. The WiFi antenna is ASUS’ rotating design, although I personally preferred the older magnetic ring antennas.

ASUS Z97-Pro WiFi AC Overclocking

Experience with ASUS Z97-Pro WiFi AC

The Z97-Pro has formed the bedrock of my Haswell Refresh and Devil’s Canyon CPU test bed since the 9-series was released, and there has not been much to worry about. With the Devil’s Canyon CPUs, both the i5 and i7 saw 4.7 GHz, as did the Pentium G3258.

For our regular i7-4770K testing CPU, the automatic overclocking provided by the 5-Way Optimization software gave 4.7 GHz for single core loading and 4.6 GHz for multi-core,  Unfortunately the voltage was set to 1.250V in adaptive mode, which causes extra voltage as the speed is ramped up. As a result, the overclock caused the system to reduce its performance when it got too hot, giving a POV-Ray score equivalent to around 4125 MHz.

Methodology

Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with PovRay and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.

For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from previous testing, starts off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (100ºC+). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.

Overclock Results

For the i7-4770K, we achieved the following:

46x at 1.325V is pretty much where we expected to be with our CPU sample. The limiting factor in our testing here is the average CPU, meaning that temperature is artificially making a ceiling.

For other CPUs:

Test Setup

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 PSUs and SSDs.
• Thank you to G.Skill and ADATA for providing us with memory kits.
• Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU, Corsair H80i CLC and DRAM.
• Thank you to ASUS for providing us with the AMD HD7970 GPUs and some IO Testing kit.
• Thank you to MSI for providing us with the NVIDIA GTX 770 Lightning GPUs.
• Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with PSUs and RK-9100 keyboards.
• Thank you to ASRock for providing us with some IO testing kit.