ASUS Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 Motherboard Review

By David Ramsey

Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
Product Name: LGA1150 Intel Desktop Motherboard
Model Number: Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1
Price As Tested: $249.99 (Amazon | Newegg)

Full Disclosure: ASUS provided the product sample used in this article.

ASUS tries to cover all the bases in the enthusiast market, and their TUF series motherboards are aimed at those who prize toughness and stability. Built with military-spec capacitors, chokes, and MOSFETs, and features such as extra ESD (electrostatic discharge) resistance, the Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 motherboard also includes ASUS’ unique Thermal Armor system and a custom processor to monitor the board’s voltages and temperatures, which is part of the Thermal Radar 2 system. Of course it also includes features common to their other motherboards such as the Digi+ fully digital power system and their best-in-class UEFI BIOS to control it all. A five-year warranty tops it all off.

The Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 prioritizes reliability over pure over clocking performance and extra features like integrated WiFi and Bluetooth, or NFC support. But that doesn’t mean ASUS has skimped on features, either, as we’ll see in the upcoming sections.

The Z97 Mark 1 is a standard ATX form factor motherboard. The military-themed olive/brown and tan coloring is used for all components like DIMM slots and ports. ASUS’ Thermal Armor plastic shield covers most of the top components from view, although all ports and connectors are readily available. ASUS is spreading this PCI-E slot design across many of their boards, and I do like the use of an x1 slot as the first slot next to the CPU, since this lets you use an x1 sound or other card without having to sandwich it between two dual-slot graphics cards.

The back of the board is covered with a thick (0.8mm) SECC steel plate. The indentation visible above the back of the CPU socket in this image is where the plate, via a thermal pad, contacts power supply components on the bottom of the board and acts as a heat sink. The plate also confers a degree of rigidity, so that the board won’t flex even under the strain of a heavy CPU cooler or giant video cards.

ASUS is also concerned about dust. To this end, the Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 comes with a complete set of dust covers, for everything from unused PCI-E and DIMM slots to tiny plugs for unused analog audio ports. At the lower right of this image are three thermal probes, which plug into dedicated ports on the motherboard.

The Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 is quite similar to the previous-generation Sabertooth Z87. This is to be expected since the Z97 chipset doesn’t bring much in the way of new features or capabilities. At the rear I/O panel, we can see some significant changes from the Sabertooth Z87 (top) and the Sabertooth Z97 (bottom). The Z97 gains an extra Ethernet port, but loses the two red eSATA ports on the Z87. Other ports– USB 2.0 and 3.0, HDMI and DisplayPort, and optical and analog audio outputs– remain the same.

Things are more interesting in the SATA port area, where SATA Express ports make their first appearance on a consumer motherboard. In the image below, the top SATA port array is from the Z87, while the bottom SATA port array is from the Z97 Mark 1. SATA Express ports will be useful someday when we have SATA Express SSDs, although ASUS sells an external SATA Express module that can connect to these ports and supports two M.2 form factor SSDs.

Aside from subtle changes in coloring, the Sabertooth Z87 (right) and Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 (left) are almost visually identical.

Let’s take a closer look at the some of the hardware details of this board in the next section.

Just in case you overlooked the mil-spec theme of this board, ASUS puts little black chevrons on their diamond-patterned alloy chokes. ASUS says these chokes run over 9 degrees Celcius cooler than their previous generation chokes. The two sliver slide switches seen at the top of this image open and close ventilation channels in the Thermal Armor cladding, although in my testing I didn’t see any temperature difference either way.

ASUS says their “TUF Black Metallic Caps” are good for 10,000 hours (thus the “10K” designation) and can operate from -70ºC to +125ºC. This is a range of temperatures your rig will likely never experience!

As expected with ASUS, there are a number of third party and ASUS-custom chips on the board. The TUF chip makes its first appearance, and ASUS says it’s dedicated to temperature monitoring and fan control, which makes me wonder what’s left for the Nuvoton NCT6792D to do. ASUS’ TPU is present and accounted for, although oddly the AI Suite software included with this board doesn’t allow CPU frequency and voltage tweaking from within Windows, which is a capability the TPU normally provides. The digital power system is under the control of the custom Digi+ chip; and the ASMedia 1184e is a PCI Express packet switch chip, possibly supporting the new SATA Express connectors. The ASMedia 1042AE is a USB 3.0 host controller, an enables ASUS to provide a total of 8 USB 3.0 ports (4 on the rear panel, and 4 via motherboard headers). Not shown is the ALC1150 sound chip and the Realtek 8111GR chip that powers the secondary Ethernet port.

Working around the edges of the board, we first see the 8-pin EPS-12V power connector, followed by a tiny connector for one of the dedicated assistant fans. Next is a 3-pin fan connector, and two four-pin fan connectors for the CPU fans. This latter feature is especially appreciated given the number of dual-fan CPU coolers these days, like the Thermalright Silver Arrow I’ll be using for testing.

Around the corner are the main ATX power connector, another four-pin fan connector, and the MEM_OK button. Pressing this button after a failed overclock automatically resets your memory timings to their default (non-XMP) settings.

At the bottom edge of the board are the Trusted Platform Module connector, and just above and to the right is a mysterious “PC Debug” connector, which is not mentioned in the manual. An S/PDIF out connector resides just above the front panel audio connector, and the three two-pin connectors that come next are for the extra thermal probes ASUS includes with the board. You can place these probes anywhere in your case and use the Thermal Radar feature to slave a fan to each one. Next we have a Thunderbolt header, followed by two more fan headers and a USB 3.0 header.

Next are two USB 2.0 headers, two extra SATA 6G ports, another fan header, and last the front panel connector.

The mounting bracket for the Thermalright Silver Arrow cooler just barely fits within the confines of the Thermal Armor around the CPU socket. Although it looks very tight, I had no problem fitting this enormous cooler to the board.

Let’s take a look at the latest iteration of ASUS’ UEFI BIOS in the next section.

ASUS has always had the best-designed UEFI BIOSes, in my opinion. They’re continually refining them, and the iteration included with BIOS 0801 on the Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 motherboard is the best I’ve seen yet.

The main page shows you all the information you’d need at a glance, segregated into logical panels. First, there’s the CPU information, along with its temperature and voltage (but bear in mind that both of these values will be with the CPU idling), along with the motherboard voltage. The panel below shows the memory and SATA device information, along with the XMP setting and whether Intel Rapid Storage Technology is on or off. Below that are the speeds for 8 fans, along with a temperature/speed graph for the primary CPU fan. (I’d expect this graph to show the settings for any of the fans, but it’s fixed on the CPU fan). At the upper right is an EZ System Tuninng panel, below which is the boot priority panel. You can click and drag devices to set the boot priority.

Pressing F7 takes you to the Advanced Mode page, which has Main, Ai Tweaker, Advanced, Monitor, Boot, and Tool sub-pages. You could write a lengthy book on just this BIOS and all its settings, which I’m not going to do…but I will try to hit the high points. The Main page just shows you component information and lets you set the language, time, and date. You can also set a security password.

The AI Tweaker is where the fun stuff is. Here you can adjust CPU and memory settings and timings to get the best possible performance. ASUS has enhanced the explanatory text shown at the bottom of the screen for the currently selected setting, which is a big help, although some of the more obscure settings are still rather…obscure. Then again, how can you summarize the t_RDRDr setting under memory timing?

The Advanced section is where all the non-performance adjustments live. This includes CPU features like Intel Virtualization Technology and Hyper-threading, and USB and SATA configuration, and so on.

I admit I’ve always found the idea of a Monitor section in the BIOS a little odd, given that your system will always be running at idle when you’re on this screen. Still, there it is.

There’s more BIOS goodness in the next section.

The Tool section includes the EZ Flash utility, which can read a new BIOS file from any storage device– including USB sticks– attached to the system.

This is also where you can store your overclocking profiles. If you think you’ve got a really good one, you can save it to a removable storage device and send it to anyone who has this motherboard.

ASUS has changed the behavior of the My Favorites feature, which provides quick links to any setting in the BIOS. Previously, pressing a function key while you were in the setting you wanted to save was all you had to do. Now, you must go to Advanced mode, press F3, and then navigate this “tree map” to assign the settings you want to the My Favorites page. I liked the old way better.

When you press F10 to save changes, you’ll see a very handy list of all the settings you’ve changed in this session, so you’ll know exactly what’s going to happen when you click “OK”. This remains one of my very favorite BIOS features.

I’ll examine ASUS’ new version of AI Suite in the next section.

Of course ASUS includes the latest iteration of their AI Suite 3 Windows-based utility for the Z97 TUF motherboard. The automatic optimization and overclocking features we saw in our review of the ASUS Z97-DELUXE motherboard aren’t here, though: this version of AI Suite is all about the fans and temperature. Well, and a lot of other stuff, too…

The main feature of AI Suite 3 on the Sabertooth Z97 is the Thermal Radar 2, the latest iteration of a feature ASUS introduced a couple of revisions back for their TUF series motherboards. Basically, this system comprises a number of thermal sensors on the motherboard combined with a very intelligent fan control system. There are nine temperature sensors on the board (including the integrated sensor in the CPU), as well as plugs for three additional sensors which ASUS includes; these extra sensors may be placed anywhere in the system. Along with support for up to nine fans (7 3-pin or 4-pin fans and two special “assistant” fans you can install as part of the Thermal Armor), the Thermal Radar system lets you slave individual fans to any temperature sensor, and to create a pre-defined (auto, quiet, turbo, etc.) fan profile or an entirely custom one. Although all the standard fan connectors are 4-pin PWM connectors, the TUF motherboard can use 3-pin fans as well, controlling the RPM by varying the voltage. The motherboard automatically detects what type of fan is in use and uses voltage or PWM as appropriate.

The main Thermal Radar screen shows a diagram of the motherboard with each temperature sensor flagged with a green dot. Note that two of the sensors are devoted to the primary and secondary PCI-E x16 slots, to keep an eye on temps in the vicinity of your graphics cards. Hovering the mouse over a sensor will reveal a pop-up showing the temperature at that sensor, but all the temperatures are shown at the bottom of the window anyway:

…as are the fan speeds:

You can let the system optimize your cooling needs on an assembled system with a single click, and you can also run a “thermal assessment” on your CPU cooling. The Thermalright Silver Arrow CPU cooler, a massive dual-fan chunk of metal, received an “Excellent” assessment as you can see below.

The Fan Control section lets you do anything you’d ever want to do with your fans, including shutting them down completely. Not shown in this screen shot are the controls for the small assistant fans, which can be configured to run in reverse at full speed for 30 seconds at start time (to remove dust), and to run for a period of time after power down.

But there’s more to AI Suite than automated optimizations, as we’ll see in the next section.

AI Suite has a lot more going for it than just Thermal Radar, of course. Here’s a quick look at its other features.

AI Charger+ lets you fast-charge USB Battery Charging (BC 1.1) compliant mobile devices rapidly from a USB 3.0 port. If your device isn’t BC 1.1 compliant, though, ASUS has a fallback:

USB Charger+ provides up to 1.5 amps at 5V on a special USB port at the back of the computer. This is handy for charging larger devices like tablet computers, whose batteries take forever to charge at the standard 0.5 amps a standard USB port delivers. Note that you can configure the motherboard to keep the power on this port “live” even when the system is shut down.

USB 3.0 Boost is another performance-enhancing feature. Devices that support USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) get a boost, and most devices that don’t can benefit from Turbo Mode, which uses larger block sizes to reduce the transfer overhead. USB 3.0 Boost automatically detects what your device is capable of and does the right thing.

You’re probably already familiar with ASUS’ USB BIOS Flashback feature, which lets you update your BIOS even without a CPU and memory installed. ASUS has made it even easier to keep up to date: simply leave a USB key in one of your ports, and the system will automatically check for BIOS updates at periodic intervals. If a new BIOS is ready, AI Suite will download it onto the USB key and notify you.

Speaking of notifications, Push Notice will alert you if voltage or temperature exceed specified limits (although what those limits are remains a mystery), and can also be configured to start, sleep, or shut down the computer at a given time.

Asus Webstorage is a new feature implemented as a separate utility. This is a cloud account, with 5GB of free space, whose contents are synchronized with a dedicated folder on your computer. Asus has free web storage client software for iOS and Android devices, so your files can be synchronized across all your devices. In my experience most files I dragged into the special folder were uploaded within a minute or two.

In the next section, I’ll take a close look at ASUS’ Thermal Armor.

The signature feature of ASUS’ Sabertooth motherboard is the Thermal Armor system. It has evolved over the years and currently comprises a plastic top plate with ventilation holes over the voltage regulator modules around the CPU socket that can be opened or closed, mounting places for two 40mm “assistant” fans, and a heavy steel back plate that serves both to keep the motherboard from flexing under the load of heavy CPU coolers and video cards, and also acts as a heat sink to some of the aforementioned VRMs.

The two helper fans are installed between the CPU and the first PCI-E x16 slot…

…as well as by the rear I/O panel:

In both cases the fans blow air inwards from the outside of the system, although by default they both run in reverse at high speed for 30 seconds at boot time to help remove dust. The fans are fully under the control of ASUS’ Thermal Radar 2 system and can be controlled like any other fan connected to the system. At full speed, these fans exceed 6,000 RPM and emit a high-pitched whine, although you’ll normally only hear this at start time. Even under heavy load, the normal speed didn’t exceed about 4,500 RPM. The fans are definitely audible in this case although not obtrusive. You can configure the fans to run for a period of time after system shutdown to exhaust hot air from under the Thermal Armor shrouding.

The Thermal Armor system can be easily removed, although there are a fair number of screws involved. With the armor off, the Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 has a more standard appearance. The black heat sinks around the processor VRM modules are much less showy than the heat sinks ASUS uses on their other boards, but of course they won’t normally be visible.

On the back of the TUF Fortifier steel backplate we can see a thermal pad that contacts the bottom of the motherboard, helping to cool the power circuitry between the CPU and the I/O panel.

ASUS has always been a little vague in describing the benefits of Thermal Armor, so I decided to see for myself what it can do. Since the Sabertooth Z97 is festooned with temperature sensors, it was easy to run a simple test: overclock the system as far as I could (which was 44x on all cores at 1.3v), run the AIDA64 system stability test, and record the temperature reported by the onboard sensors without the two assistant fans, with the fans, and with the Thermal Armor removed. Here are the results:

(@22ºC)	Idle	Load( w/fans)	Load (no fans)	Load (no armor)	Delta (w/fans vs. no armor)
CPU	32	78	77	73	-5
VCORE	47	54	56	59	+5
VCORE (rear)	33	38	49	48	+10
DRAM	32	34	35	33	-1
USB 3	37	38	44	38	+0
PCIE 1	33	34	38	35	+1
PCIE 2	32	33	36	33	+0
MB	27	29	30	30	+1
PCH (Z97)	36	38	42	41	+3

The results are interesting. Comparing the maximum temperatures recorded with the Thermal Armor and assistant fans installed with the temperatures records with the Thermal Armor removed, 7 of the 9 points measure showed higher temperatures without the armor. The biggest delta is the rear VCORE temperature, which is a startling 10ºC warmer under load with the armor removed. I expected the rear VCORE to show higher temps since the rear assistant fan blows directly over these components when it’s installed. The one real oddity in this table was that the CPU load temperature dropped 5ºC with the armor removed, which I can’t explain, since the Thermalright Silver Arrow heat sink is completely outside the influence of the armor.

It’s also obvious that you should definitely install the assistant fans. In every case except the CPU, load temperatures were higher without the fans. I did try the load test with the fans with the VRM venting open and closed, but I didn’t see any difference in temperature.

ASUS doesn’t position this motherboard as an overclocking monster, but let’s see what we can do anyway in the next section.

After a few years of testing motherboards, I’ve noticed that motherboards based on the same chipset tend to have very similar performance. This wasn’t always the case, but now that the memory controller’s in the processor, and the PCI-E lanes are in the chipset, it’s not surprising that everyone’s “Y22″ chipset motherboard performs pretty much alike…at stock settings, anyway. Haswell collapses the field even further by moving voltage regulation circuitry onto the CPU. Say goodbye to those exotic 24-phase CPU power supplies of yore…

So testing motherboards, unlike testing CPUs or video cards, is more about examining the proprietary features that make one different from another, as well as testing a board’s overclocking ability, especially if it’s marketed to the enthusiast community.

The ASUS Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 motherboard offers two automatic overclocking options, both in the BIOS. The first is a simple EZ System Tuning toggle at the upper right of the main screen, and you can switch between normal, eco, and “ASUS Optimal” mode.

The second is the confusingly similar EZ Tuning Wizard, invoked from the main BIOS screen by pressing F11. This will ask you a simple series of questions about your system, starting with your intended usage:

Next, you’re asked about your cooling:

The final screen shows the estimated result of the tune:

Now, unlike ASUS’ more sophisticated auto-tune systems, neither EZ System Tuning nor EZ Tuning Wizard iterate through various settings, running a stress test after each until the system crashes. Both appear to use a heuristic to immediately apply a pre-defined overclock. For the EZ System Tuning, aka “ASUS Optical” setting, this was a surprisingly aggressive setting of multipliers of 43-43-42-41 (with 1, 2, 3, and 4 cores loaded), applying the XMP memory profile, and boosting CPU voltage to 1.3 volts.

EZ Tuning Wizard was even more aggressive, setting all cores to 44x and the BCLK to 102mHz and applying the XMP memory profile. However, there was one little problem: it left the CPU voltage at 1.072 volts. When I tried to boot with these settings, the system would blue-screen before booting into Windows. I tried resetting the BIOS defaults and running the tuning wizard several times and got the same results every time. In order to get the system to boot and run I had to manually set the CPU core voltage to 1.3v and lower the BCLK to 100mHz. This voltage error is egregious enough that I can only assume it’s a bug in this early BIOS.

I tested the performance of the system at stock settings as well as with the ASUS Optimal settings and the modified tuning wizard settings, which I list as “manual tune” since that’s really what it was. Although I’ve managed to get this particular Core i7- 4770K to run reliably with 45x multipliers on other motherboards, I was limited to 44x here.

I should note here that like most other modern motherboards, the Sabertooth Z97 by default overrides Intel’s core multipliers so that all cores run at 39x under load. Also, I always ran the memory at its XMP timings.

• Motherboard: ASUS Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1 with BIOS 0801
• Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K “Haswell” CPU
• System Memory: 8G (2x4G) DDR3-2133 at 11-12-11-30 timings
• Video Card: NVIDIA GTX580 reference card
• CPU Cooler: Thermalright Silver Arrow
• Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium x64

• AIDA64 Engineer v4.3.2900
• SPECapc Lightwave
• x264HD 5.0

I’ll start with synthetic benchmarks in the next section.

AIDA64 is a full 64-bit benchmark and test suite utilizing MMX, 3DNow! and SSE instruction set extensions, and will scale up to 32 processor cores. An enhanced 64-bit System Stability Test module is also available to stress the whole system to its limits. For legacy processors all benchmarks and the System Stability Test are available in 32-bit versions as well. Additionally, AIDA64 adds new hardware to its database, including 300 solid-state drives. On top of the usual ATA auto-detect information the new SSD database enables AIDA64 to display flash memory type, controller model, physical dimensions, and data transfer performance data. AIDA64 v1.00 also implements SSD-specific SMART disk health information for Indilinx, Intel, JMicron, Samsung, and SandForce controllers.

All of the benchmarks used in this test- Queen, PhotoWorxx, ZLib, and hash- rely on basic x86 instructions, and consume very little system memory while also being aware of Hyper-Threading, multi-processors, and multi-core processors. Of all the tests in this review, AIDA64 is the one that best isolates the processor’s performance from the rest of the system. While this is useful in that it more directly compares processor performance, readers should remember that virtually no “real world” programs will mirror these results.

In the Queen test, the manual tunes picks up a nice 13% boost, but PhotoWorxx, as usual, remains relatively insensitive to increases in CPU speed.

The ZLIB and Hash tests scale well with CPU performance increases, showing improvements of 11% and 13%, respectively.

Let’s take a look at SPECapc Lightwave in the next section.

SPECapc (Application Performance Characterization) tests are fundamentally different from the SPECviewperf tests. While SPECviewperf tests incorporate code from the various test programs directly into the benchmark, the SPECapc tests are separate scripts and datasets that are run against a stand-alone installation of the program being benchmarked. SPECapc group members sponsor applications and work with end-users, user groups, publications and ISVs to select and refine workloads, which consist of data sets and benchmark script files. Workloads are determined by end-users and ISVs, not SPECapc group members. These workloads will evolve over time in conjunction with end-users’ needs and the increasing functionality of PCs and workstations.

For this test, I ran the SPECapc “Lightwave” benchmark against a trial installation of Newtek’s Lightwave 3D product. The benchmark, developed in cooperation with NewTek, provides realistic workloads that simulate a typical LightWave 3D workflow. It contains 11 datasets ranging from 64,000 to 1.75 million polygons and representing such applications as 3D character animation, architectural review, and industrial design. Scores for individual workloads are composited under three categories: interactive, render and multitask.

The benchmark puts special emphasis on processes that benefit from multi-threaded computing, such as animation, OpenGL playback, deformations, and high-end rendering that includes ray tracing, radiosity, complex textures and volumetric lighting. The test reports three scores: Animation (multitasking), Animation (interactive), and Rendering. The numeric scores represent the time it took to complete each section of the benchmark, in seconds, so lower scores are better.

I’ve found the SPECapc Lightwave 3D test to be an excellent indicator of overclock stability. In many cases, overclocked systems that will make it through every other benchmark here will crash in this test.

Bear in mind that what this benchmark does is use scripts to control a stand-alone instance of Lightwave, so in that sense it’s more indicative of real-world performance than the embedded Lightwave code in SPECviewperf. Performance increases between stock and manual tuning are 7% in the Interactive test, 5% in the Multitasking test, and 11% in the Rendering test.

Tech ARP’s x264 HD Benchmark comprises the Avisynth video scripting engine, an x264 encoder, a sample 1080P video file, and a script file that actually runs the benchmark. The script invokes four two-pass encoding runs and reports the average frames per second encoded as a result. The script file is a simple batch file, so you could edit the encoding parameters if you were interested, although your results wouldn’t then be comparable to others.

This is another example of a useful benchmark that’s based on real-world code. I like encoding benchmarks since they’re one of the few tests that can measure a real-world use of the power of modern multi-core processors. Also, like SPECapc Lightwave, this benchmark is an “overclocking killer”, able to crash overclocked machines that can run synthetic stress tests all day long.

The frames-per-second encoded score increases by 11% for Run 1 and 12% in the more demanding Run 2.

In general, the performance increases I saw in these benchmarks were minor enough so that in most cases you wouldn’t notice them unless you were actually running and timing benchmarks.

I’ll present my final thoughts and conclusion in the next section.

ASUS has responded with innovation and verve as Intel has moved more and more capabilities into its chipsets, making it more difficult for vendors to distinguish their products. Broadly speaking, ASUS’ motherboard lineup comprises value boards, where price is important; mainstream boards that trade on features; boards for enthusiasts and overclockers, typically under the Republic of Gamers branding, and the mil-spec TUF boards like the Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1.

As I noted in the overview, there’s not a lot of difference between last year’s Sabertooth Z87 and this year’s Sabertooth Z97. ASUS has removed the eSATA ports, added an Ethernet port, taken advantage of the Z97’s support for more USB 3.0 and SATA 6G ports (although they added extras via third-party chips on the Z87), and most interestingly added SATA Express support.

So if your system’s already running a Z87 motherboard, there’s really no reason to upgrade to the Z97 at this point. However, if you’re building a new system and place a higher premium on stability and a 5-year warranty than on overclocking prowess or integrated WiFi, this board might be for you.

I do actually miss the eSATA ports since I have an eSATA dock that I use every now and then, but that’s about the only hardware complaint I can come up with. The BIOS bug that renders the overclock applied by the EZ Tuning Wizard non-functional is annoying, but I’m sure ASUS will address it in due course. I have been working with ASUS’ automatic overclocking features for many years now and this is the first time I’ve seen one that wouldn’t work as proposed.

This is the first time I’ve tested what happens when you remove a TUF motherboard’s thermal armor, and I admit I was surprised at the results. I was at an ASUS technical event a couple of years ago, where the the TUF Z77 was introduced as the first TUF motherboard with this feature. Most of us assumed it was purely cosmetic; a bit of marketing fluff to distinguish the board. A writer for another publication asked if the thermal armor really had any effect, and ASUS’ reply was to test it and see. Well, now I have, and I have to say it really works.

You could argue that nobody really needs a motherboard stuffed with mil-spec components, extra ESD protection, and dust covers for every port and connector on the board. You could also argue that most people don’t need diving watches, but they remain a very popular segment of the watch market. There’s also ASUS’ 5-year warranty to consider; it’s something that certainly has value if you’re not one of those people who rotate out their systems with every new Intel chipset.

The performance of this motherboard at stock speeds is pretty much the same as any other Z97 motherboard– although I’d love test the SATA Express feature some day– and its overclocking ability is marginally less than the other ASUS Z97 motherboard I’ve tested. But the difference is tiny enough so that you’ll never see it in day-to-day life. Compensating for this minor drawback is the wonderful Thermal Radar 2 feature, which makes every other discrete fan controller you’ve ever seen look like a relic of the 20th century. With a dedicated TUF processor linking onboard thermometers to your choice of fans, it’s easy to create customized profiles that will optimize noise, performance, or anything in between, all automatically. ASUS may not provide much in the way of automatic overclocking for this board, but the automated thermal tuning is, I think, worth more in most cases.

All the normal ASUS advantages are present here: excellent quality of construction, visual appeal, innovative features, a solid set of Windows utility programs, and what I think is the best UEFI BIOS in the business. There’s really not much I don’t like about this board.

Available online for $249.99 (Amazon | Newegg), the Sabertooth Z97 splits the price difference between ASUS’ fancier motherboards and their mainstream line. If you like the TUF concept but are willing to give up the Thermal Armor, SATA Express, one Ethernet port, and dust covers, you can get the otherwise identical Sabertooth Z97 Mark 2, with the same mil-spec components and five-year warranty, for $179.99 (Amazon | Newegg).

+ Thermal Armor actually works
+ Thermal Radar 2 feature links board sensors to fans for ultimate control
+ SATA Express support will be useful Real Soon Now.
+ Truly wonderful UEFI BIOS

– No onboard wireless
– EZ Tuning Wizard creates non-functional overclock
– My Favorites BIOS feature less convenient than previous iterations

• Performance: 9.25
• Appearance: 9.00
• Construction: 9.50
• Functionality: 8.75
• Value: 9.00

Excellence Achievement: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award.

COMMENT QUESTION: Who makes the best motherboards, in your opinion?