ASUS Launches its New Z77 Motherboard Series!
ASUS launched its new Z77 motherboard series last week. The exciting lineup comprises boards that run the gamut from workstations to mATX gaming rigs! Read on to find out more about their Z77-based offerings.
ASUS has launched their Intel Z77 Express chipset motherboards. In this new exciting lineup, there is even a workstation board, ASUS P8Z77 WS, which is targeted at business workstation computing requirements like video editing and post-production tasks. The rest of the motherboards in the series looked more familiar.
The ASUS P8Z77 WS is an ATX form factor board that supports 4-way SLI/CrossFireX multiple graphics cards setup. This board is meant for workstations with business computing requirements. It also features the improved Fan Expert 2 to keep the workstation running at optimal temperature.
The next motherboard in the series is TUF Sabertooth Z77. This board is clad in TUF Thermal Armor, similar to TUF Sabertooth P67, its earlier predecessor that is based on Intel P67 Express chipset. The TUF Thermal Armor gives the Sabertooth Z77 its distinctive look. The board also boasts of military-standard components used in its VRM solution, called TUF components.
The Sabertooth Z77 has Dust Defenders covering its PCIe slots for protection against dust and other debris. With its military-standard VRM components, the Sabertooth Z77 may find itself powering a ruggedized workstation for deployment in harsh operating environments.
For gamers, ASUS has launched ROG Maximus V Gene, a micro-ATX board that is packed with exclusive features like the mPCIe Combo expansion card that allows the Maximus V Gene to be fitted with an mSATA SSD or/and a mini-PCIe add-on card. All these expansion efforts can be done without increasing the board's real estate.
The ASUS ROG Maximus V Gene has four DIMM slots and two PCIe Gen 3.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 with both slots are populated). It sports two native SATA 6Gbps connectors and four native SATA 3Gbps ones. Third party SATA connectivity is provided by ASMedia SATA controllers.
The mainstream Z77-based offerings from ASUS are its P8Z77-V series. We have highlighted the workstation SKU of this series; now, let us take a look at ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe. This board has the usual offerings of a high-end board and it brought back memories of our past experiences (ASUS X79 motherboard technical seminar and our review of ASUS P8Z68-V Pro) with similar offerings from ASUS.
The ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe sports 4 memory DIMM slots and it support dual-channel DDR3 memory kits of up to 32GB in capacity. The board features three Digi+ power controllers that control power regulation for both the CPU and DRAM.
In our preview article, we speculated that the rest of the series would be fleshed out with fleshed out with Pro and Basic models in the near future; however, it turns out that ASUS has included SKUs like the P8Z77-V LX and P8Z77-V LE. The rest of the mainstream (P8) series are P8Z77-V Pro and P8Z77-V. According to information gleaned from ASUS' website, both P8Z77-V LX and P8Z77-V LE exclusively supports AMD quad-GPU CrossFireX technology, with no mention of support for NVIDIA SLI technology.
The ASUS P8Z77-V LE is the higher-end of the pair as it has more SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0 ports, courtesy of the presence of third party controllers.
Another difference we noted is the LX and LE boards do not have additional on-board connectivity options like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. Hence, we can safely conclude that these two boards make up the lowest end of this mainstream series.
The ASUS P8Z77V LX lacks third SATA 6Gpbs and USB 3.0 third party controllers; it also does not features ASUS new Smart Digi+ VRM solution.
Besides these mainstream ATX form factor boards, there are also boards in ITX and micro-ATX form factors that will be available for retail very soon. Please head to the official product website of ASUS for more delectable details.
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