A Closer Look & Layout Analysis
The ASUS Z97-A is a very nice looking motherboard and a very well laid out motherboard. In my opinion the SATA ports are well placed, all the front panel headers are also in ideal locations with all on-board switches easily accessible on the edges of the board. The CPU 8 pin and motherboard 24 pin are both in ideal locations too. ASUS have located the M.2 slot in a clever place because you can use either the M.2 slot or the two PCIe X1 slots, not both at the same time (a chipset limitation) so the M.2 slot doesn’t clash with any PCI connectivity. I’m also very impressed that ASUS offer two CPU fan headers, most budget boards normally only offer one which means you’d need to buy a splitter if you had a dual fan CPU cooler (or a pump/fan AIO). My only criticism would be that I would have liked to have seen the USB 3.0 header mounted along the edge at a right angle with the SATA ports to allow for more optimal cable management.
The CPU socket makes use of an 8 phase VRM with fully digital power delivery. ASUS are using an “8 Phase” design but it has 4 PWM drivers, 8 chokes and 8 caps compared to their higher end boards which get 8 PWM drivers or more.
The board is fairly compact so you’ll need to watch out for memory clearance with your CPU coolers.
SATA Express comes with this motherboard but if you have no need for SATA Express you can use its two SATA ports like normal 6Gbps SATA III ports. You must set SATA Express mode from within the BIOS to use it, the same applies for M.2.
There’s a shed load of connectivity at the bottom of the motherboard and a power switch! That has to be a first for such an entry level motherboard, I’m glad to see all these features gradually trickling downwards as ASUS has always promised.
The PCI Express lanes are well spaced, any user of this motherboard should have adequate space to use all their expansion cards. Also take note of the fairly advanced sound implementation with a separated PCB, I didn’t think we’d be seeing that feature passed down to the entry level any time soon. The codec is still the same as the Z87-A, Realtek ALC 892, but this codec should perform better given the optimisations in place.
The new colour scheme of grey/gold is quite a sophisticated look and this board really looks a lot more premium than the price would imply.
The CPU VRM heatsinks are fairly modest but still look sizeable enough to get the job done.
The rear I/O is well fleshed out for the average user. To me the display connectivity seems a little OTT given most people will be going for a discrete video card, I’d like to have seen a couple extra USB ports replacing some of the display connectivity.
The PCB is a dark brown colour, much like what we saw on MSI’s budget Z87-G43 late last year. I think while brown isn’t desirable, I’d much rather have brown than blue, green, yellow or red.
