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HWM+HardwareZone.com Tech Awards 2014: Editor's Choice - Part 2

Best Motherboard for Intel

Best Motherboard for Intel

The Intel 8-series is made up of the Z87, H87, and H81 Express. There are also the Q87, Q85, B85 Express chipsets that are meant for corporate desktop systems. For end-users, the Intel Z87 Express chipset is the only one in the entire range that will allow you full access to the overclocking features of the K-series Haswell CPUs. With native support for PCIe Gen 3.0 bus communication (courtesy of the CPU), the chipset supports both AMD CrossFire and NVIDIA SLI multi-GPU configurations. Since there is a wide variety for Intel Z87-based boards, we looked across them and rounded up the top-end enthusiast boards that are very much in their own class. Here then are our nominees:

Nominees: 

 

  • ASRock Z87 OC Formula
  • ASUS Maximus VI Extreme
  • ECS Gank Domination Z87H3-A2X Golden
  • Gigabyte Z87X-OC
  • MSI Z87 MPower Max

 

And the Winner Is...

ASUS Maximus VI Extreme

The performances of the boards were rather close; however, we focused more on their gaming and overclocking performance. At the same time, we also paid attention to their operating temperatures. The two boards that meet in fierce contention, were the ASUS Maximus VI Extreme and the Gigabyte Z87X-OC. The ASUS board turned in high performance for the gaming benchmarks. The ASUS board also took the pole position for our overclocking tests. It also helped that the UEFI BIOS utility of the ASUS Maximus VI Extreme was lag-free and well-organized, such that we could push the board to operate beyond normal bounds.

The Gigabyte Z87X-OC was a strong winner, especially for our standard application benchmarks; however, its outstanding performance came at a price as its operating temperature hovered at 40.5 degrees Celsius; in comparison, most of the board's operating temperature was much cooler at around 33- to 35 degrees Celsius. Its features weren't as comprehensive as compared to the ASUS Maximus VI Extreme that topped the rest with its OC Panel, and has high-end PLX PEX 8747 high speed switching chip for serving out PCIe 3.0 bus lanes from the Haswell CPU. With its high performance levels and enthusiast feature set, the ASUS Maximus VI Extreme is the best top-end motherboard, even though it commands a much higher premium. Here are select benchmark results from our shootout to support our findings:-

Scoring Breakdown
Criteria/Model ASRock Z87 OC Formula ASUS Maximus VI Extreme ECS Gank Domination Z87H3-A2X Golden Gigabyte Z87X-OC MSI Z87 MPower Max
Performance 7.5 8.0 7.0 8.0 8.0
Features 8.0 9.5 7.5 8.0 7.5
Overall 8.0 8.5 7.5 8.0 8.0
Price S$468 S$609 S$450 S$422 S$452

For more details on how we selected our winners, check out the full reviews and articles listed at the References section at the end.

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