Asus Z87-K Motherboard Review – £100 budget friendly

1. Introduction2. Asus Z87-K Motherboard (Packaging & Bundle)3. Asus Z87-K Motherboard (Board Layout & Features)4. Corsair Vengeance Pro 2,400mhz, HX750 and H100i5. Asus Z87-K Motherboard (The Bios and Overclocking)6. Asus Z87-K Motherboard (Super High Res Gallery)7. Testing Methodology8. System: Unigine Heaven Benchmark9. System: Unigine Valley Benchmark10. System: 3DMark 1111. System: 3DMark12. Processor/Memory: SiSoft Sandra13. Processor: CineBench R11.5 64 bit14. Processor: 3D Rendering15. Processor: Media Encoding16. Motherboard: USB 3.0 Performance17. Motherboard: SATA 6 Gbps performance18. System: Alien V Predator (DX11)19. System: Sleeping Dogs (DX11)20. System: Tomb Raider (DX11)21. System: Dirt Showdown (DX11)22. System: Metro Last Light (DX11)23. System: GRID 2 (DX11)24. Closing Thoughts25. View All Pages

When Intel launched their new range of Haswell processors at the start of June we reviewed a handful of new Z87 motherboards, including the high end Asus Sabertooth priced around the £200 mark. Not everyone can afford a £200 motherboard, so today we look at the budget Asus Z87-K motherboard priced around the £100 sweet spot. Can an inexpensive Z87 board really keep a discerning enthusiast user happy?

On paper, the Asus Z87-K ticks quite a few boxes. It has the latest user adjustable UEFI BIOS configuration with simplified or advanced menus, depending on your skill level. Thanks to the latest Z87 Intel chipset, all the SATA ports are 6Gbps rated. If you are building a system with very limited funds, there are VGA, HDMI and DVI-D ports on the rear I/O panel to use integrated Intel graphics.

Asus have incorporated ‘5K hour Solid State Capacitors' which ‘assure a 5,000 hour lifespan, equivalent to 2.5 times longer than traditional capacitors'. Of course competitors such as MSI, Gigabyte or ASRock no longer use traditional capacitors either, but we can't knock ASUS for making this a focal point. All of the major manufacturers are guilty of touting a ‘new' feature, which often is just comparable to a competitor implementation.

Asus Z87-K Highlights:

• ASUS 5X Protection – All-round protection provides the best quality, reliability, and durability
• New UEFI BIOS – Friendlier, easier, and more intuitive with helpful info added
• Fan Xpert 2 – Comprehensive controls for the perfect cool and quiet balance
• USB 3.0 Boost (UASP Support) – 170% faster transfer speeds than traditional USB 3.0
• Ai Suite 3 – One-stop access to innovative ASUS features

The Asus Z87-K ships in a very nondescript box focusing on the ‘5x protection'. For those interested this is

1. stable power control.
2. overcurrent protection.
3. ESD Guards.
4. High Quality Solid Caps.
5. Stainless Steel Back I/O.

This is a very spartan bundle, as we would expect at the tight price point. Asus bundle a user manual, software disc, I/O plate and a couple of SATA 6 Gbps cables.


The new ASUS black and gold colour scheme has split opinion. Some people love it, and others loathe it. I can't say it appeals to me, I much prefer their Black and red Republic of Gamers schemes. That said, at £100 we doubt too many people will be complaining about a colour scheme if the motherboard delivers the goods.

Internal I/O ports:

• 1 x USB 3.0 connector(s) support(s) additional 2 USB 3.0 port(s) (19-pin)
• 3 x USB 2.0 connector(s) support(s) additional 6 USB 2.0 port(s)
• 1 x COM port(s) connector(s)
• 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connector(s)
• 1 x CPU Fan connector(s) (1 x 4 -pin)
• 2 x Chassis Fan connector(s) (2 x 4 -pin)
• 1 x S/PDIF out header(s)
• 1 x 24-pin EATX Power connector(s)
• 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V Power connector(s)
• 1 x Front panel audio connector(s) (AAFP)
• 1 x System panel(s)
• 1 x Clear CMOS jumper(s)

This board fits within the ATX Form Factor sizing, but it only measures 30.5cm x 20.8cm. It would be ideal for a space restricted chassis.

Due to the budget nature of the Z87-K there are no heavy duty heatsinks around the CPU socket to cool the VRM's. There is one gold heatsink between the CPU socket and the backplate.

The Asus Z87-K can accept four DDR3 memory modules in dual channel, up to a maximum of 32GB. It supports 2933(O.C.)/ 2800(O.C.)/ 2666(O.C.)/2600(O.C.)/ 2400(O.C.)/ 2200(O.C.)/ 2133(O.C.)/ 2000(O.C.)/ 1866(O.C.)/ 1600/1333 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory configurations.

One of the particular weak areas of this board is the lack of SLi certification. The board however supports AMD Quad CrossFireX.

There are:

• 1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 mode, yellow)
• 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode, dark brown)
• 2 x PCIe 2.0 x1
• 3 x PCI slots.

There are six SATA 6GBps ports on this motherboard all of which are vertically mounted to the board. Two of them are positioned close to the memory slots (above right), but they do clear the top PCIe graphics slot, thankfully. We normally only see these on budget motherboards as they can cause a little extra work in regards to routing, but its not a huge issue. We feel most people saving money buying a budget board are likely to accept this without a problem.

Back I/O Ports:

• 1 x PS/2 keyboard (purple)
• 1 x PS/2 mouse (green)
• 1 x DVI
• 1 x D-Sub
• 1 x HDMI
• 1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
• 2 x USB 3.0
• 4 x USB 2.0
• 3 x Audio jack(s)

We always like to use the latest memory when testing a new series of motherboards. With this in mind Corsair very kindly offered to send us 16GB of their latest Vengeance Pro Series 2,400mhz memory. We will be looking closer at this memory in a dedicated review shortly.

The Corsair Vengeance Pro ships in a colourful package featuring an artistic photograph of the heatspreader, as shown above.

The heatsinks are nicely designed with curved edges and company branding on the sides.

This memory has an XMP profile set at 2,400mhz with 10-12-12-31 timings.

Corsair also sent us one of their HX750 power supplies which is 100% compatible with Haswell. We recently published a little article on these compatibility concerns over here, with a short excerpt below:

“Intel’s Haswell C6/C7 power states require a minimum load of 0.05A on the 12V2 rail and many current power supplies will fail to provide that low a current. Many older power supply designs comply with ATX 12V V2.3 design guidelines meaning they only call for load of 0.5A on the CPU power rail. This will mean C6 and C7 power states will be disabled in the bios.

Although we have yet to test, there may be cases that the supplies will become unstable when the processors try to enter into these states. Additionally the problems get worse when we factor in that many power supply units do not report minimum currents supported by the 12V2 rail.

From what we hear, the problem may kick in when the CPU enters sleep mode but with a load on the power supply non primary +3.3V and +5V rails. If the load on these rails hits a certain point (different from PSU to PSU) the +12V can go out of spec – voltages greater than 12.6V. If the +12V is out of spec when the system steps out of sleep state the power supply protection may kick in and stop the power supply from running normally. This situation may involve the end user turning the power supply switch off and back on again.

A power supply that uses a DC to DC design for the non primary +3.3V and +5V rails will not have a problem with the new low power sleep states. The reason is based around the DC to DC converter, used to convert +12V to +3.3V and +5V. This design ensures that there will always be load on the +12V regards of the load the CPU places on the power supply.”

Corsair also sent over one of their H100i coolers which we reviewed back in November last year, it is one of the best mainstream ‘all in one’ coolers money can buy. You can read our full review over here.

Special thanks to Corsair for outfitting us with much of our partnering equipment for this review today.


The BIOS is immediately familar to all ASUS users. It starts off in the ‘basic' mode, ideal for novice and inexperienced users. To change boot drive priority simply drag the icons into position for example.

When we opted for advanced mode, we are greeted with the ‘Main' panel. This highlights the BIOS revision number, processor identity and speed. Underneath is total memory capacity and frequency. We are using Corsair 2,400mhz rated memory but it defaults to 1,333mhz initially, to ensure a safe first post.

The AI Tweaker panel is were all the overclocking and tuning action takes place. We will look at this shortly when we go to overclock the Intel Core i7 4770k.

An overview of the Advanced panel showing the CPU, PCH, SATA and onboard devices configuration. This all works exactly as we would expect.

The ‘Monitor' panel highlights various fan speed, voltage and temperature related information. You an also configure the Q Fan settings at the bottom of this page.

The boot menu is used to select drive priorities as well as posting parameters. All very self explanatory.

The Tool menu is used to flash upgrade the BIOS, and to save and load BIOS parameters.


The default bios settings are all automatic, which makes sense.

We loaded the XMP profile to set the Corsair Vengeance memory at the correct 2,400mhz speeds. This worked without a hitch.

We selected the CPU Core Ratio to ‘per core' and overclocked the 4770k to 4.5ghz (45 x 100). Regular Kitguru readers will be aware that our particular 4770k sample is limited to 4.5ghz with 1.28 volts. Any higher and it can get very hot (over 90c).

We attempted to achieve the maximum overclock possible and get a post into windows. The 4770k posted at 4.7ghz with 1.34 volts but the core temperatures hit close to 100c under load and it was not prime stable. Still, if you are interested to know potential on tap, the Asus board seems to have plenty depending on your processor and cooling. Regardless, this is very impressive for a ‘budget' design.

Stability was enhanced by changing the Load Line Calibration to Ultra High and the CPU Power Phase Control to ‘Optimised'. We adjusted the CPU Power Duty Control to ‘Extreme'.

Memory voltage was automatically adjusted to 1.65v thanks to the XMP profile.

On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.

We installed Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit on this system today. Our polls on the Kitguru main site and Facebook page have shown a huge percentage of our readers are still in favour of Windows 7. Our own internal testing shows very little difference between the operating systems in regards to gaming or synthetic benchmark testing, so we are staying with Windows 7 for the time being.

Our test system today is based around the new Intel Core i7 4770k processor running at default clock speeds of 3.5ghz and when overclocked to 4.5ghz. We are using 16GB of Corsair Vengeance Pro Series memory running from an XMP profile at 2,400mhz with 10-12-12-31 2T timings.

We are using a KFA2 GTX760 EX OC graphics card for this review today, we took a closer look at this solution a short while ago. You can read this review here.

We are using the 30 inch Dell U3011 for this review today:

Asus Z87-K System
Processor: Intel Core i7 4770k (3.5ghz & 4.5ghz)
Motherboard: Asus Z87-K
Cooler: Corsair H100i (performance mode)
Graphics: KFA2 GTX760 EX OC
Memory: 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro Series @ 2,400mhz (10-12-12-31 2T)
Power Supply: Corsair HX750
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive.
Chassis: Lian Li X2000
Boot Drive: Patriot 240GB Pyro SE
Storage Drive: Patriot 240GB Wildfire.

Comparison Systems (for specific synthetic test compares):

Processor: Intel Core i7 3770k
Motherboard: Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer 13
Memory: 16GB G.Skill @ 2,400mhz 11-11-11-31.
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W.
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive.
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2.
Boot Drive: Kingston SSDNow V+200 90GB.
Storage Drive: Patriot 240GB Wildfire.

Intel E5 2687W x 2
Motherboard: Asus Z9 PE-D8 WS
Coolers: Corsair H80 x2
Memory: 64GB Kingston Predator 1,600mhz 9-9-9-24 1T
Power Supply: Seasonic 1000W Platinum Modular
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li X2000FN
Boot Drive: Corsair 240GB Neutron GTX SSD
Secondary Drive: Corsair 240GB Neutron SSD

Intel E5 2660
Motherboard: Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WIFI
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 16GB G.Skill ARES 2,133mhz @ 9-11-10-28
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Lian Li X2000a
Boot Drive: Intel 510 120GB
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB WildFire

Intel i7 3960X EE
Motherboard: Asus P9X79 WS WorkStation
Cooler: Corsair H100
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator GT8 2400mhz memory
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Optical Drive: Asus BluRay Drive
Chassis: Cooler Master Cosmos 2
Boot Drive: Crucial C300 128GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 240GB Pyro SE

Intel i7 3820
Motherboard: ASRock Extreme4-M
Cooler: Intel reference cooler
Memory: 8GB Corsair GTX8 @ 2133mhz
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: Lian Li PC60
Boot Drive: Crucial C300
Secondary Drive: Patriot Pyro SE 240GB

Intel i5 3570K @ 4.2 – OCUK Prodigy Arctic Gaming System
Motherboard: ASRock Z77E-ITX Intel Z77
Cooler: Coolit Liquid
Memory: Corsair Vengeance White 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Power Supply: OCZ ZS 750W PSU
Chassis: Bitfenix Prodigy Mini ITX Case – White
Boot Drive: OCZ Vertex 4 128GB
Secondary Drive: 1TB HDD

AMD FX 8150 Black Edition
Processor: AMD FX 8150 Black Edition
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire

Intel Core i7 990X
Processor: Intel Core i7 990x
Cooler: Corsair H100
Motherboard: Gigabyte G1 Assassin
Memory: Kingston HyperX 6GB
Drives: Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Chassis: Antec Twelve Hundred

Core i7 970 @ 4.6ghz
Cooling: Coolit Vantage
Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Power Supply: Corsair AX1200
Memory: 6GB ADATA @ 2133mhz 9-10-9-32
Storage: Kingston SSDNow V+ 512GB Gen 2 SSD (Storage) / Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB (OS boot)

Intel Core i7 2700k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2700k
Cooling: ThermalTake Frio OCK
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard
Chassis: Silverstone Raven 3.
Power Supply: Corsair 850W.
Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory
Storage: Intel 80GB SSD (boot) / Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD.

Intel Core i7 2600k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2600k
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Z68 Professional Gen 3
Cooler: Intel XTS-100H
Memory: ADATA 1600mhz DDR3 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower 850W
Boot Drive: Intel 510 SSD 250GB

Intel Core i5 2500k
Processor: Intel Core i7 2500k
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 Z68 Motherboard
Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev.2 CPU Cooler
Memory: Corsair 1600mhz memory 8GB (2x4GB)
Power Supply: Corsair 850W.
Boot Drive: Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD.

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1100T
Motherboard: Gigabyte 990FXA-UD7
Cooler: Noctua NH D14
Memory: G-SKill Ripjaws 1600mhz 8GB (2x 4GB)
Power Supply: ADATA 1200W
Chassis: SilverStone Raven 3
Boot Drive: Intel 40GB SSD
Secondary Drive: Patriot 120GB WildFire.

Software:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
PCMark 7
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
HQV Benchmark V2.
Atto Disk Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
HQV Benchmark 2.0
SiSoft Sandra

Games:
Tomb Raider (DX11)
Total War: Shogun 2 (DX11)
Dirt Showdown (DX 11)
Sleeping Dogs (DX 11)

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus USB BluRay Drive
Lacie 730 Monitor (Image Quality testing)
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Nikon D3X with R1C1 Kit (4 flashes), Nikon 24-70MM lens.

Game descriptions are edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.

Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We test at both 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions.

System performance is very strong, averaging over 70 frames per second at 1080p and over 36 frames per second at 2560×1600.

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark.

The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal.

This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

We test at both 1920×1080 and 2560×1600 resolutions.

Strong results in this benchmark, maintaining playable frame rates at both resolutions.

3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance.

Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.


High scores in this demanding Direct X 11 benchmark.

3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”

The KFA2 GTX760 EX OC graphics card is very capable and the overall Direct X 11 performance in this benchmark is very strong indeed.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”.

We think that’s quite fitting.It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

Performance of the 4770k via the Asus Z87-K is pretty much in line with previous results. Memory performance is also strong.

CINEBENCH R11.5 64 Bit is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

The Core i7 4770k is a powerful processor, especially when overclocked. At 4.5ghz the 4770k scores 9.75 points which is not that far behind the 6/12 core Xeon E5 2660 at default clock speeds.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We created a new 8200×3200 scene and recorded the time for the hardware to finalise the render.

Performance with heavy duty rendering tasks is good. That said, if 3D rendering is a primary task, we still recommend the Slot 2011 3960x processor.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

New and Improved Features

• Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
• Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
• Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
• Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
• Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
• Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.

For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are using the latest version of the software.

We test with hardware acceleration disabled and then enabled to monitor the changes. We use the same graphics card in both systems.

Excellent results, highlighting the power of the system, particularly in an overclocked state.

We measure the system USB 3.0 performance by using the excellent Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB USB 3.0 drive, which we reviewed back in February this year.

Performance via the USB 3.0 ports is excellent, scoring 277 MB/s read and 164 MB/s write, in the sequential tests. Due to the nature of this kind of flash, and via the USB 3.0 interface, 4k and 4k QD32 performance is substantially worse than from a native SSD drive across a SATA connector.

We measure performance of the Patriot Wildfire 256GB Solid State Drive when connected to the Intel Z78 Express Chipset controller.

No performance concerns from the onboard Intel chipset controller matching results from other Z87 motherboards we have tested in the last month.

Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a 2560×1600 resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on.

Smooth frame rates at these demanding settings, dropping under 30 fps only twice in our test environment.

Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series. As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

We are using the highest possible image quality settings at 1080p, including the high resolution texture pack.

One of the most demanding game engines when the high resolution texture pack is added. The hardware maintained a smooth frame rate, although it was close to the borderline.
After a delayed release from late 2012 to March 2013, the game received much anticipation and hype. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.


We used the Ultimate quality setting at 1920×1080 with the settings detailed above.

The system performs well in this game, averaging 47 frames per second and holding above 30 frames per second at all times.

Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

We configured the game at the ULTRA preset with a 2560×1600 resolution and 4x MSAA.

A demanding game at 2560×1600 however the system manages to maintain a smooth frame rate at all times, dropping a couple of times to 30 frames per second in the more demanding sections of the environment.

Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike.

4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.


Exceptional performance at such high settings, averaging 47 frames per second and holding above 30 frames at all times.

Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid.  It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.


We tested at 2560×1600 with 8x AA and ULTRA settings, shown above.

Excellent results, averaging 43 frames and holding above 30 at all times.
It has been around a month since Intel launched their new Haswell processors and major players such as Asus, Gigabyte, ASRock and MSI have already released a slew of new motherboards to cater to every price point. So far, we have primarily focused on high end models, so it was interesting to spend some time with a budget board from ASUS this week.

The ASUS Z87-K doesn't make a wonderful first impression. The supplemental bundle has been stripped down to help reduce the overall cost, and ASUS only include two SATA cables along with the motherboard manual and software disc. If you have a Solid State drive and a couple of hard drives for storage, you may need to buy another SATA cable. Realistically however we would expect most people will have some spare SATA cables in a drawer at home.

The motherboard itself will certainly split opinion. The gold/yellow slot colours are rather gaudy and they do not appeal to me at all, I much prefer the Republic Of Gamers red and black aesthetic. I personally feel the gold slots will appeal to the Far East audience, rather than the European or American enthusiast user.

On close inspection it is rather straightforward to tell that this is a budget solution. The heavy duty heatsinks around the CPU socket are all but gone, with only one modestly sized sink primed to cool the VRM's. All of the SATA ports are vertically mounted – a common PCB trait to reduce engineering costs. This may make cable routing a little more difficult, but the ports are adequately positioned so they don't interfere with the installation of large graphics cards in the primary PCI E slot.

The ASUS Z87-K Bios is bulletproof and fully loaded in regards to overclocking. We didn't experience any negative experiences, and indeed the only limitation we encountered were related specifically to our Intel Core i7 4770k engineering sample. Regular readers will be aware that our processor is realistically limited to 4.5ghz, unless we were to use very high end watercooling or phase change. At 1.28 volts @ 4.5ghz, the 4770k peaks at 83c under load when paired up with the Corsair H100i ‘all in one' cooler. We can push higher, but long term damage would occur and we aren't chasing unrealistic figures just for publication.

We have spoken with several UK system builders during the last month and they are limiting overclocking results to between 4.2ghz and 4.4ghz on the systems they sell. Haswell appears to be a hot running chip design and many enthusiast users seem happy with their 3570k or 3770k chip from the previous generation. If you aren't interested in integrated graphics performance there does seem little incentive to spend a wad of cash on a new processor and motherboard this year.

We had no problems loading the XMP profile on the 2,400mhz rated Corsair memory, achieving complete stability without any messy BIOS intervention. In this regard the Z87-K is as good as any other board we have tested to date, regardless of the price.

It would be safe to say that if you are in the market for a new Z87 system and can't afford the most expensive products, then the Z87-K does deserve serious consideration. Technically it proved as solid as the Sabertooth board which we reviewed on launch day, if you can live without all the bells and whistles.

One of the cheapest prices in the UK right now for the ASUS Z87-K is at ARIA, for £101.99 inc vat.

Pros:

• Very stable.
• overclocks as well as other boards we have tested.
• excellent BIOS implementation.
• 2,400mhz memory was stable via XMP.

Cons:

• Not the most attractive looking board.
• weak bundle.
• vertically mounted SATA ports.
• not much in the way of heatsink cooling.

Kitguru says: An excellent ‘no frills' overclocking board for the enthusiast user who needs to monitor his spend.

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