ASUS TUF Z97 Mark S Motherboard Review: The Arctic Camo Special Edition

ASUS TUF Z97 Mark S In The Box

The biggest potential for in-the-box bundles is when a motherboard manufacturer releases a themed motherboard. The majority of themed motherboards are aimed at overclockers and gamers, while channel motherboards tend to be rather thin or heavy on everything. The TUF range, which is a themed range, has a large opportunity to make the purchase of something like the Mark S more of an event than it already is (especially when you opened the package and saw it was #0001).

In the box we get:

Driver Disk
Manuals
White rear IO shield
Four SATA Cables
Rigid 2-way SLI Connector
Q-Connectors
35mm and 40mm fans with assoicated screws
3 PCIe x16 slot covers
3 PCIe x1 slot covers
2 DRAM slot covers
Rear IO Dust Filter
Connector cap set
3 Thermistor cables
7 SATA caps
8 USB caps
2 Onboard USB caps
5 Audio Caps

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 for providing us with memory.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU.
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.
Thank you to Cooler Master for providing us with Nepton 140XL CLCs.

Test Setup

ASUS TUF Z97 Mark S Overclocking

Experience with ASUS TUF Z97 Mark S

While the Mark S uses the Z97 chipset, it is safe to say that overclocking is not its primary concern. Some users will testify that overclocking reduces the longevity of a system, but the benefit of the TUF system is that it should last longer overall. I like overclocking on almost everything anyway, and I came into relatively few issues with the Mark S. But as mentioned, TUF is not focused in that area, and as a result the only way to really overclock the system is via the BIOS. Though if you pile in some good fan settings, there is the opportunity to perhaps knock off a few degrees on a good overclock.

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

As with most of the Z97 motherboards we have reviewed, our slightly-better-than-average CPU is the limiting factor. We pushed it easily to 4.6 GHz, although the temperatures were getting rather hot during OCCT loading.