Final words and conclusion
Final Words & Conclusion
So as we mentioned in the first part of this article already, the Intel Z97 chipset all by itself is not really interesting from an upgrade point of view if you bought a PC in say the last two years. It is a re-spin of the Z87 DNA. There are a couple of differences that the chipset however offers, and that's making PCIe storage units compatible with standards like SATA Express and M2 PCIe SSDs. But if you purchased a Z87 motherboard and a Haswell processor last year already, by all means there is just no reason to upgrade whatsoever. Even coming from Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge processors and the Z77 platform will not change my mind about this recommendation.
The big conundrum however is this, Z97 motherboards can be very interesting if you are in need of an upgrade. See the motherboard manufacturers simply went nuts with their motherboard designs and i believe that 2014 has to be the best year of them all if you look at what the motherboard manufacturers did and now are offering.
The Platform & the motherboard
Even the Z97-A, which is the entry level mainstream motherboard, is so incredibly pimped and well designed that it is hard to not be impressed. I mean, compare mainstream motherboards from three years ago with what you can purchase right now with Z97. Z97 motherboards have evolved taking all the knowledge, experiences and wisdom from P67, Z77 and Z87. The two motherboards tested in this review are a perfect example of this. Z97 is going to show you guys quality at its best; added with features and easy ways to overclock your processor and memory. Both motherboards offer multiple PCI Express x16 slots PCIe Gen 3.0 and up-to 2 way SLI/CrossFire combo's.
Storage
On the storage side of things you'll receive many SATA 6Gbps ports provided by Intel's Z97 PCH, seconded by Asmedia controllers on the Deluxe model. Have a good look at our performance results, SATA3 SSD wise, the Intel SATA3 ports offer the best performance. SATA Express is going to be a hard sell. It uses a weird big connector and seems to use too many wires for it to be sexy. Our prototype sample didn't perform as expected either. But the keyword is prototype here. No, M2 is where things get interesting. Over M2 you gain a 10 Gbps connection with the chipset; add in an M2 SSD and immediately you have been freed up from the SATA3 bottleneck. Let me make a small side-statement on that SATA3 bottleneck though, SATA3 is PLENTY fast. Going from 500 towards 750 MB/sec might be a huge step, but in real world usage it is going to be hard to notice the difference. But we are all gurus here right? We crave a thirsty need for the best and fastest kit on the globe when it comes to our hardware. Yes, M2 .. it is hard to not be impressed by it and I for one think that M2 is going to be way more popular opposed to Sata Express. Time will tell. It is however good to see that both motherboards support SATA Express and M2.
Aesthetics
Okay looks are subjective. But can I say what a massive improvement the new design is over the previous Z87 Deluxe models? A nice dark matte black PCB is covered by dark connectors mostly and then subtle gold'ish heat-sinks. But sure, taste matters yet differs eh? Both motherboards have extremely good looks and have a proper layout and stuffed with features.
The ASUS Z97 Deluxe motherboard has similar looks yet many more features.
For both motherboards the layout overall is excellent, there's not a thing on them that is located at the wrong position.
Performance
For both the Z97-A and Z97 Deluxe the non-overclocked (default) performance is comparable to the baseline performance of the reference Z87 motherboards we tested. We expect the ROG editions to get a faster base-clock though. But overall the default performance for both motherboards is similar with a small exception here and there, as tested with a Core i7 4770K processor.
Tweaking and Overclocking
I first want to applaud ASUS for the new UEFI BIOS. They changed the style and layout. It's very easy to use and with the new styled fonts it just is a great experience. Nice job. Tweaking wise there are plenty of variables available to you. For example if you use XMP DIMM memory modules you can simply activate XMP in the BIOs and the memory all of the sudden will run 2133 MHz or whatever memory you purchased. You can tweak it manually just as well of course. Overclocking - for both the Z97-A and Z97 Deluxe the overclock results will be similar. We got the 4770K processor rocking stable at 4800 MHz with the memory (XMP enabled) at 2133 MHz very easily by simply activating XMP and increasing the turbo multiplier to 48. Even at long term duration CPU usage this overclock remains absolutely stable. The one condition for this of course is proper cooling. We applied a Corsair H110 liquid cooler. These kits are fairly affordable yet offer exactly what ol' Hilbert here needs in terms of cooling performance and low noise levels. We also fired off a manual overclock session on the Z97 Deluxe and, as stated many times now, Haswell processors run hotter when overclocked opposed to Sandy Bridge. Reaching 4600~4900 MHz might be easy to accomplish with the motherboard but you'll find yourself needing juice in the 1.35~1.40 Volts range of the processor and that requires massive cooling. We did reach 4900, but the heat levels simply became to high for me to consider this a proper overlock. Now these tweaking limitations are not based on the motherboard. In fact this motherboard will go as extreme as you need it to, and then it'll help you accomplish that. It's just Haswell processor running too darn hot.
We can't wait for Intel to release Devil's Canyon based processors where the cooling should be much improved. We expect these processors to be released during the Computex 2014 time-frame though.
Conclusion
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