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

Allan 'Zardon' Campbell June 1, 2013 CPU, Featured Tech Reviews, Motherboard

The Asus Z87 Sabertooth isn't the most beautiful looking motherboard we have seen. It is populated with cream (beige) and brown slots/ports across the board. Most of the PCB is covered with the TUF Thermal Armor which we discussed a little earlier in the review. This can be removed completely if you want, or additional fans can be added in specific places to aid with airflow. The board measures 30.5 cm by 24.4 cm fitting the ATX form factor.

The board is a 8+2 Digital Phase power design with ‘TuF components' – the Choke, Cap and MOSFET, which ASUS claim are certified by military standard. It is impossible for us to verify this, so we also take manufacturers at their word.

As we mentioned on the last page, ASUS supply this motherboard with a series of covers, which fits in with their ‘SAFE & Stable! Guardian Angel' premise. These dust defender covers can protect various parts of the board from long term dust pollution and there is even an I/O dust filter. The board has anti surge protection as well.

If you are the kind of person who likes to clean their system with a air spray duster on a semi regular basis, this sounds a little like a gimmick to us, but again, everyone will have a different view on it.

There is a beefy cooling system around the CPU socket as shown above. Asus have left enough space however to install the largest heatsinks, so there will be no fitting problems. A Noctua NH D14 can be fitted here … we tried.

The Z87 Sabertooth motherboard has four memory slots which work in a dual channel configuration. Officially ASUS claim a maximum of 32GB can be installed with speeds of 1,066mhz, 1,333mhz, 1,600 mhz and 1,866mhz. We test beyond these claims later with new XMP memory.

All SATA ports are SATA 6Gbps capable with Raid 0, 1, 5 and 10 support. The two biege ports on the far left of the image above are ASMedia controlled, and the other six are controlled by the Intel Z87 Express chipset.

Onboard audio is handled by the Realtek ALC1150 8 channel high definition AUDIO CODEC. This allows for high quality 112dB SNR stereo playback output (line out at rear) and 104dB SNR recording input (line in) support. There is ‘absolute pitch' 192 khz/24 bit true BD lossless sound with BD audio layer content protection.

The board has 2 PCI Express 3.0/2.0 slots (single at x16 or dual at x8/x8). There is also a single PCI Express 2.0 slot which runs at x16. There are also 3 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots.

The PCIe 2.0 x 16 slot shares bandwidth with PCIe 2.0 x1_1 slot, PCIe 2.0 x 1_2 slot, and PCIe 2.0 x1_3 slot. The PCIe 2.0 x 16 slot default setting is x1 mode. The PCIe 2.0 x1_1 slot shares bandwidth with eSATA 6.0 GB/s ports. The board support both QUAD CrossfireX and QUAD SLi configurations.

The rear panel has the following connectors:

1x Displayport
1x HDMI Port
1 x Optical S/PDIF Out port
1x USB BIOS Flashback button
2x eSATA 6.0Gbps ports
1x Lan (RJ45) port
4x USB 3.0/2.0 ports (blue, 1 supports USB BIOS Flashback)
4x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
8 channel audio I/O ports

The CPU power connector resides at the top of the board. Depending on the case you are using, this can be tricky to access after the motherboard is installed into the case. There are a total of 7 fan headers scattered across the board. These headers can all control fan speed, even if they are 3 or 4 pin connectors.

Along the bottom of the board (from right to left) are the front system panel connector. A DirectKey button (for accessing the BIOS without having to press the DELETE button on the keyboard), fan header, Thermal sensor connectors, two USB 2.0 connectors, a TPM connector, a standby power LED, Clear RTC RAM, another fan header, a digital audio connector and the front panel audio connector.