ASUS Z97I-PLUS (LGA 1150) Motherboard Review

Software Overview

Home Screen

Moving into the software and as we mentioned the new focus is the Turbo App, the fifth pillar of the ASUS optimisations – in addition to TPU, EPU, Fan Xpert III and DIGI+ VRM.

Turbo App

Within the Turbo App you can pick your Applications (exe files) and set performance, audio and LAN profiles for them. For example you might pick Battlefield 4 and set a profile that gives it high LAN priority, a gaming audio profile and a CPU turbo.

TPU

With the TPU not much has changed although we’ve got a redesigned interface and the ability to tune each core individually which is pretty cool. This is useful for applications that are single threaded.

Fan Xpert III

Fan Xpert II has become III and it offers an extended fan tuning range to allow you to get even quieter operation. As usual there is an automated fan tuning wizard that gives you full control once it has calculated the capabilities of each fan.

EPU

The EPU has been given a little facelift and you can now integrate the Windows power plan controls into your EPU settings allowing you to control when the monitor gets turned off, when the system sleeps in addition to the other EPU controls on things like the CPU clock speed and hard drive activity.

DIGI+ VRM

The DIGI+ VRM now allows you to pick your CPU Power Phase control from within your OS which paves the way for better in-OS overclocking too.

USB 3.0 Boost

USB 3.0 Boost makes another appearance but their isn’t much that appears to have changed here. The main benefit here is still from having a UASP capable USB 3.0 device.

Turbo LAN

Turbo LAN is a joint ASUS-CFOS project that allows you to packet prioritise your applications.

ASUS Home Cloud

One of the advantages of being able to have Bluetooth, WiFi AC and Intel Gigabit all on the same tiny platform is that it opens up the way for a potentially very powerful network attached computing system. The ASUS HomeCloud software is really nice because it allows to easily create and manage this in a variety of ways. There are three aspects to ASUS HomeCloud:

• ASUS Media Streamer
• ASUS HomeCloud Server
• Wi-Fi GO!

With ASUS Media Streamer you can make the PC a media server for music, photos and videos from which it can be accessed over LAN or via an internet gateway if you use an ASUS HomeCloud server account.

To use the ASUS HomeCloud server aspect while you’re on-the-go you’ll need to register and set up an account. You can even sychronise this with your ASUS WebStorage ID if you already have that type of account from another ASUS device like an ASUS tablet or convertible for example. This account will allow you to manage your PC more effectively from remote locations.

The third pillar of the ASUS Home Cloud is the well established Wi-Fi GO! software. This offers up the usual functions that you can see below. These have been present on ASUS motherboards for at least 2 generations if I remember rightly but “if it ain’t broke then don’t fix it” as the old saying goes!