Asus Z87 Sabertooth Motherboard Review (w/ Intel i7 4770k)

Rating: 9.0.

This weekend Intel launch their new Haswell range of processors and the major motherboard partners have a range of models for the enthusiast audience to choose from. We have several articles prepared for today, and this review focuses on the new Asus Sabertooth Motherboard paired up with the Intel Core i7 4770k.

ASUS have earned a reputation over the years for creating some of the world's finest motherboards, many of which we have reviewed on Kitguru. The Sabertooth range have been a firm favourite with the enthusiast audience thanks to high overclocking capabilities, a full feature set and killer stability under heavy load. We have high hopes for this board today.

We won't be testing the onboard Intel HD graphics in this review, we will cover that in our Gigabyte review – so head over to our front page to read more if you are interested.

The new Asus Z87 Sabertooth supports the latest 4th generation Intel Core i7 / i5 and i3 processors. It should be priced around the competitive £200 price point in the United Kingdom.

The Z87 Express Chipset supports the LGA1150 socket. It utilises the serial point to point links which increase bandwidth and enhance system performance. It natively supports up to six USB 3.0 ports and enables the iGPU function for Intel integrated graphics performance. All of the SATA ports support 6GBps capability, so no hunting around to make sure you have the right ports for that shiny new Solid State Drive.

Additionally, for those people who want the ultimate gaming performance, the motherboard supports Quad SLI and CrossfireX configurations.

One of the biggest selling points of the Sabertooth has always been the ‘Thermal Armor' – a casing which covers the majority of the PCB. This ‘Armor' has a flow gate mechanism which allows you to open, or close the thermal armor via a button. When the gate is open, it provides an excellent thermal solution for the CPU. When the gate is closed it focuses air on heatpipes for better heat removal, useful when liquid cooling.

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