Asus Z87-C (Z87) Motherboard Review

Ok, where do I start? I Like Asus boards, and always have done, and that’s one of the main reasons why we use them in our test benches when testing graphics cards and memory, but for this new range, I think they may have lost sight a bit. Sorry, not a bit, a LOT, but maybe it’s just me, and we invite for your comments below to see if you agree with us, but the gold is not good in our opinion, especially with mustard coloured connectors, but I can on the other hand see this working in Egypt, India and other Asian and African countries, but we don’t expect it to do well in western markets such as the United Kingdom or the USA.

Feature wise, for a lower-end board, it is quite plentiful including plenty of fan headers for sufficient cooling, USB 3.0 functionality and a nice array of expansion slots including x1, x16 and legacy PCI slots of which it has 3, which we’re not overly thrilled about, but in the markets we spoke about above, the legacy PCI connector is still used quite heavily. This does tells us that this board isn’t aimed at the higher-end of the scale, as legacy PCI is at this time, quite old technology in Western markets. SATA wise, we have plenty of ports, all supporting 6Gb/s speeds and with RAID technology and IRST, Asus have certainly made full use of the Intel Z87 chipset to their advantage.

Looking at Asus features, even for a lower-end board, they have still included TPU, Digi+ VRM’s, USB 3.0 boost, Fan Xpert 2, GPU boost and much more, and it has a UEFI BIOS which has been vastly improved to be a bit easier on the eyes. All of these features together add towards the overall performance of the board, and that is something that shocked us quite a bit. Across the board we saw strong results from the Z87-C, mainly from the more CPU intensive benchmarks, and with USB 3.0 results being at the top of the stack, anyone wanting strong connectivity options should definitely consider this board, but the shock doesn’t stop there, as overclocking really made our jaws drop. We were expecting some mid to high-end overclocks, but nothing like what we saw with a hefty 4.9GHz at 1.36V, we were utterly amazed and the increases in performance on our charts show some strong increases too, meaning the overclock to 4.9GHz was certainly worthwhile.

It’s also worth noting that with our overclock, due to the fairly low voltage, temperatures were at a reasonable level and therefore, this could be used inside a chassis 24/7 with full stability with no issue, as long as you’re using a cooling solution similar to what we did, with the Corsair H100i, or any other strong contender of AIO watercooling or high-end air cooler from Noctua/Phanteks or the like, then you will have no problem with an overclock like this.

With all of that in mind, we do have to stick by what we’ve said in terms of the styling, but if you plan to put this board inside a chassis with no window and forget about it, then you really won’t have any issue, but in my honest opinion you won’t want to have this mustard yellow and brown board glaring at you through a side-panel window, at least not for me.

Price wise, at £109.99 it’s a little more expensive than I’d personally want to pay, with my budget for something like this being at the £100 mark, but as time goes on and the launch of Z87 dies down, we should see the price drop slightly to around £99.99, giving this extremely fantastic value for money, considering how it performs and overclocks in real-world situations.

The Z87-C is a cracking board with lots of the latest features and offers performance to rival the competition in all areas, and I’m personally keen to see how it does in terms of sales, as I’m still on the fence about the colour scheme and design, but it really is each to their own.

Pros

• Performance at stock is strong
• Overclocking potential is amazing
• Asus have harnessed the power and features of the Z87 chipset
  
• Feature rich
• CrossFire support
• High-end features are still present including TPU, FanXpert 2, GPU boost
• Strong branding
• BIOS have been improved

Cons

• Three legacy PCI expansion slots are not welcomed
• Colour scheme is hit-or-miss
• Pricing is just over what we’d expect

eTeknix Says: Asus have managed to manufacture a board that offers strong performance with huge overclocking potential for a good price and have managed to harness all of the Intel Z87 features onto a budget/mainstream board. The colour scheme isn’t going to be to everyone’s tastes, but looking past that, this is one strong contender for the Z87 market, and we can see these flying off the shelves.

Thanks to Asus for providing this review sample.