ASUS Z87-PLUS - Performance Test



Introduction:

The Z87-Plus is one of the ASUS’ mainstream Z87 motherboards (mobos) lineup, offering support for multiple expansions, good onboard audio and ASUS' new “4-Way Optimization”, a feature which is not available in their lower-tier boards. Other than that, the board packs quite a few goodies for those who are looking to build a powerful rig without breaking the wallet. Let’s take a look at what the Z87-PLUS has to offer.

Product Link: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87PLUS/

Suggested Retail Price: RM 699

Specifications:



Full specifications of the Z87-PLUS can be found HERE

Overview of Z87-PLUS:



Unboxing:


The board comes in a simple black box with some yellow/ gold illustrations.


The back of the box describes the features brought by this board as well as what the platform can do.


The Z87-PLUS comes in a black/ yellow/ gold colour scheme of the Z87 mainstream board lineup and conforms to ATX form factor with measurement of 12 inch x 9.2 inch (30.5 cm x 23.37 cm).


The mobo is compatible with socket LGA1150 based Intel’s 4th Generation Core i7, i5 & i3/ Pentium/ Celeron processors. Here we have 8+2 digital power phase system to deliver enough power for overclocking. The four DDR3 memory slots can support a total of 32GB of RAM with speed up to 3000MHz. Moreover, it also supports Intel Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) for easy memory tweaking.


Let’s proceed to the expansion slots. On this board itself you will find three PCIe x16 slots, two of them are PCIe 3.0. These slots support 2-way Quad-SLI and Quad-CrossFireX. Besides that, it comes with a pair of PCIe x1 slots and a conventional PCI slot. Also spotted, a TPU switch on the lower left which allows you to automatically adjust the CPU ratio and clock speed for an optimal system performance.


The board packs a total of eight SATA 6Gbps ports (six provided by the Z87 chipset, two by the ASMedia controller). The six Intel SATA ports support RAID 0,1,5 and 10, a well as other Z87 features like Smart Connect and Dynamic Storage Accelerator. The SATA port layout makes it easy to plug and unplug the SATA cables without having to pull your graphics card.


The rear IO panel looks pretty standard and it doesn’t come with any USB 2.0 port:

1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port
1 x DVI-D
1 x D-Sub
1 x HDMI
1 x LAN (RJ45) port
6 x USB 3.0
1 x Optical S/PDIF out
6 x Audio jacks
1 x Mini DisplayPort

This post has been edited by owikh84: Nov 23 2013, 10:15 AM

Back side of the board has a backplate to give retention to the CPU socket on the top of the mobo.


Here we can see the complete accessories included in the package.

Test Setup:





This post has been edited by owikh84: Nov 22 2013, 12:36 AM

The UEFI BIOS:

Main Page of AI Tweaker: Multiple CPU straps for selection.


Main Page # 2:


RAM Timing Control:


DIGI + Power control:


CPU Power Management:


ASUS SPD Information:


BIOS Flashing via USB drive:


Hardware Monitoring:


EZ-Mode: a simplied version of UEFI


Software & Tools:



1) AI Suite III - OC tweaking utility, is a tool for overclocking in windows environment without the needs to restart your PC.
2) TurboVCore: A simplified version of TurboV.
3) MemTweakIT - lets us view the memory settings and also submit a score for competition. Unfortunately, due to Intel’s lockdown it is unable to adjust timings real-time in the OS for now.

This post has been edited by owikh84: Nov 22 2013, 12:21 AM

Stability Tests:

LinX 0.6.4 w/ AVX:


Due to the limitation of my 4770K, I could only stress the chip at 4.4GHz @ 1.28v. This overclock survived LinX without any error in about one hour. One of the cores hit 95C during loading.


Benchmark Tests:

During these benchmarks, the 4770K was overclocked to 4.7GHz.

3DMark 13:


3DMark 11:


3DMark Vantage:


3DMark 06:


3DMark 05:


3DMark 03:


PCMark 7:


Super Pi 32M/ wPrime/ MaxxMEM/ AIDA64 Cache and Memory Benchmark:


Super Pi 1M:


This post has been edited by owikh84: Nov 22 2013, 12:22 AM

HyperPi 32M & 1M:


Cinebench R11.5 & R15:


wPrime 1.55 & Fritz Chess 4.2:


Unigine Heaven 4.0:


Memory Overclocking:

Hynix-MFR IC: Apacer ARES 3000C12 2 X 4GB @ 3000MHz 12-14-14-25-1T


Hynix-CFR IC: G.Skill TridentX 2800C11 2 X 4GB @ 2933MHz 11-14-14-25-1T


Samsung IC: G.Skill TridentX 2600C10 2 X 4GB @ 2800MHz 10-12-12-21-1T


PSC IC: Corsair DominatorGT GTX4 2533C9 2 X 2GB @ 2000MHz 8-9-8-24-2T


BBSE IC: G.Skill RipjawsX 2133C8 2 X 2GB @ 2133MHz 8-9-8-24-2T

Game Benchmarks:

Bioshock Infinite:

1920x1080: Ultra Quality Preset, DX11 only, Diffusion Depth of Field, Built-In Benchmark

Metro Last Light:

1920x1080: Very High Quality Preset, DX11, Texture Filtering: AF 16X, Motion Blur: Normal, SSAA: ON, Tessellation: Very High, Advanced PhysX: ON, Built-In Benchmark

Thoughts & Verdicts:

The Z87-PLUS is a pretty sweet motherboard. Performance wise the Z87-PLUS has no problem keeping up with the rest of Haswell pack. The UEFI BIOS works stably. On the software side, ASUS has completely revamped its AI Suite III tweaking utility. Beginners should appreciate the improved TPU’s auto overclocking feature, which is aggressive enough to match the overclock generated with manual overclocking. Overclocking on the Z87-PLUS run pretty well. Somehow the board chose to be picky on the RAM for overclocking. I didn't manage to overclock the PSC and Elpida-BBSE based memory sticks on this board. Nevertheless, Hynix and Samsung based kits overclock very well on this mobo. The ASUS Z87-PLUS has all the goodies to make your rig a potentially powerful machine.

Lastly, I would like to thank ASUS Malaysia for giving me the opportunity and pleasure of reviewing the Z87-Plus motherboard.

Performance: 4/5
Materials: 5/5
Specifications: 5/5
Appearance: 4/5
Performance/Price Value: 5/5

Pros:
+ Good stock performance
+ Intelligent UEFI BIOS
+ Informative user manual
+ Good SATA port layout
+ Overclock ability via onboard TPU switch
+ Multi-GPU support

Cons:
- Overpriced in Malaysia
- Mixed memory overclocking
- No debug code LED panel
- No Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support
- Brown colour PCB and the yellow/ gold theme may not be so attractive to some of us
- Lack of LucidLogix Virtu MVP software
- Can’t adjust memory timings with MemTweakIT in the OS at the time of writing

nicely done bro, good to see even entry level (i supposed ) of z87 can do 3k on memory...

Thanks for the kind words bro.
Yeah it is a nice entry level board good for newbie overclockers.
It was quite a surprise when I first saw it booted at 3k LOL.

awesome board bro

Da heck so fast.. mine finished on tomorrow tho xD

Thanks mate.

LOL. what stuff are you reviewing atm?

Z87 Deluxe too and R9 270X.. need to ask sanko if he still need my review as you upped this board already xD

I don't have Deluxe board

Eh wahahaha i saw it wrongly, i thought you did Deluxe xD ahaha ok LoL *Blushing*

HAHAHAHA... no wonder