Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 Motherboard3. Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 Motherboard (Super High Res Gallery)4. Bios and Overclocking5. Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: PCMark 77. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: 3DMark 119. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark10. Synthetic: HQV Benchmark 2.011. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra12. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit13. Synthetic: SSD Performance14. Real World: 3D Rendering15. Real World: Media Encoding16. Real World: HandBrake 9.517. Gaming: F1 201118. Gaming: Alien V Predator19. Gaming: Resident Evil 520. Closing Thoughts21. View All Pages

The P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 motherboard ships in a nicely styled box with the name of the product listed in white and green type. There are some key selling points along the bottom at the right of the box.

The bundle includes:

• User's manual
• ASUS Q-Shield
• 2 x SATA 3Gb/s cable(s)
• 2 x SATA 6Gb/s cable(s)
• 1 x SLI bridge(s)
• 1 x Q-connector(s) (2 in 1)
• 1 x ASUS USB 3.0 Bracket(s)

The motherboard is built around a black PCB and looks quite attractive with the blue heatsinks populated around the board. This is an ATX motherboard, measuring 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm.

The P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 is passively cooled with several chunky heatsinks cooling the VRM's and southbridge.

The board has 8 SATA ports. The three light blue ports on the left (above) are SATA 3.0 GB/s controlled by the Z68 Express Chipset. The two gray ports are SATA 6.0 GB/s and are also controlled by the Intel Z68 express chipset. the two dark blue ports on the right at controlled by the Marvell controller and are rated SATA 6.0 GB/s. The single eSATA 3.0 GB/s port is controlled by the JMicron JMB362 controller.

The Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen 3 has 2 PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, which run at x16 in single mode, or x8/x8 in dual. There is also a single PCI Express 2.0 x 16 slot, which is black. This runs at x4 mode and is compatible with PCIe X1 and x4 devices. There are two more PCI Express 2.0 x 1 slots and two PCI slots.

The PCI e x 16_3 slot shares bandwidth with PCIe x 1_1 slot, PCIe x 1_2 slot, USB 3_34 and eSATA. The PCIe x16_3 default setting is x1 mode.

There are four DIMM slots with a maximum memory support of 32GB. The board can handle speeds of 1066mhz/ 1333 mhz / 1600 mhz / 1866 mhz (O.C.) / 2133 mhz (O.C.) and 2200mhz (O.C.). As expected, it supports Intel Extreme Memory Profiles (XMP).

Underneath these slots is an EPU and TPU switch. There is also a MEMOK button which can help rescue a non posting system.

ASUS include handy power and reset buttons along the bottom of the board, which are very useful.

Along the bottom of the board we have three USB headers, firewire headers and the front panel connector. There are plenty of fan headers scattered across the area of the PCB to cover a wide audience of enthusiast user.

The back I/O panel includes the following connectors:

• 1 x Bluetooth module(s)
• 1 x DVI
• 1 x D-Sub
• 1 x HDMI
• 1 x eSATA 3Gb/s
• 1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
• 2 x USB 3.0
• 6 x USB 2.0
• 1 x Optical S/PDIF out
• 6 x Audio jack(s)

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