- May 1, 2013
- 6,333
- 18
- 27,965
Hello Everyone,
I have a Biostar TZ77A motherboard. Practically no review sites have reviewed this board, and being that LGA 1155 is starting its slow phasing out its doubtful any of them ever will. So to help people considering to buy this motherboard I thought I would post my personal review of this motherboard.
Rating: 7/10
PROS:
Z77 Chipset, allows full features of overclocking.
I bought the board for a total of $60. Amazing price
4 RAM slots
Plenty of PCI and PCI-E ports
The debug LED on board after booting will show the CPU temperature in real time.
Uses a HYBRID ISL6367 PWM chip. This helps to reduce power consumption and better manage the power draw of the processor. (See Other Thoughts)
Feels really sturdy. Unlike my old ASrock Extreme 4-M which felt like the weight of its parts would snap it in half.
I actually like the BIOS. Mouse doesn't work well, but it still seems pretty good. Anyone who is used to using a keyboard in BIOS will feel right at home.
CONS:
This board definitely has some issues that I think Biostar needs to address. First, let me point at that we have another motherboard manufacturer lying about the hardware on board. I am talking about the power phases. Printed directly on the motherboard, it says "8 Phase CPU Power". This is a complete lie. It makes use of a ISL6367, which details a maximum of 6-Phases for CPU or Memory and a single additional phase that can be used for a few different components. This chip only allows for a maximum of 7-phases. While its possible there is a second chip capable of working with this one under the heat spreaders, I question if they would add another chip given the added cost.
Max FSB increase I have been able to get stable is 103. Anything higher causes instability. This is relatively low compared to others which can potentially hit 110. The motherboard does give itself a bump in speed ranging from .25-.50Mhz though, and for an LGA1155 system its really not terrible.
I find the placement of the LED to be a bad choice. My graphics card completely covers it up, but it is still easily view-able diagonally. However, the BIOS battery is right beside it, and I think they should be switched. It would get the LED about an inch further from the GPU. That would be enough in my system to make it completely view able. So it seems a poorly thought out placement.
As others have mentioned on websites, this board has audio trouble. I question if the audio chipset is about to go out. Using the Audio header to connect to audio ports on the front of my case do not seem to be functioning. Using the back audio ports I get audio, but it is anything but clear. It sounds like it has a lot of interference and other noise. For a fairly high end onboard audio codec, this shouldn't be happening. Many other motherboards with the same audio chip do not report this problem. Biostar claims to use a feature called "Clean Tone 2" which is just an added capacitor on each audio channel to help remove noise. I think there is something fundamentally wrong with their audio setup and they attempt to fix it with a few extra capacitors, but it doesn't work. So if you buy this board expect you may need to use HDMI or a sound card for audio.
Onboard SPDIF header might as well not exist. For the price it costs to get one, you can buy a full sound card.
Seems to have s little compatibility issues with my AMD Radeon HD 7850s, but it might have been a different issue. It only came up while trying to overclock the FSB, and the system wasn't stable at higher than 103 anyways so its not much of a concern.
Cannot use CPU offset to lower CPU voltage. Only increase voltage. It might have issues overclocking. I cannot tell you for sure. I think my i7-3770k is defective for a few reasons, but at first I got it to 4.3Ghz stable without a voltage increase, and the stability vanished despite passing stress tests. So I think the board will overclock well, but it might not. Its default max voltage for an i7-3770k is 1.250v, and stress testing at 4.3Ghz showed it never passed 1.188v. This is in the default voltage mode though, using "Voltage Offset" the voltage for some reason tends to run higher even without increasing it.
Final Thoughts
Alright so with such a long list of cons, you are probably wondering why I gave it
a 7 out of 10. Well for one thing the price is excellent for what you get. It has some issues, its not perfect, but I only paid $60, right now its selling for $80 and that still seems a fair price to me.
I have mentioned the ISL6367 PWM chip twice before. The power design would push this down an additional egg, but having a hybrid design counters it. ASrock completely lies about their power design saying its digital, but its really analog. Digital and hybrid are better than analog, hence why its an advertised feature. Well this board might lie about having an 8-phase CPU power design, but it has a hybrid power design and doesn't even mention it. For those of you unsure what this means, pretend electricity is water flowing in the PC. The more phases, is like adding more channels for the water to flow through making it more stable and flow better. Analog design is like just that, you have streams nothing more. Digital is like you have the streams but you also have complete control over the incoming water so you control how much comes into those streams better. Hybrid is in between, and like you can have some effect on the incoming water but not completely control.
Long story short, it allows for more stable overclocking, and I think this makes up for the lies on the number of phases.
The audio chipset would be a bigger deal a few years ago. If it goes out, I do plan to send it to be fixed. But like a lot of people I use HDMI for video and audio and don't worry about the sound card so much. I am getting a sound card for SPDIF for a wireless headset I have, but with how cheap this board is I have extra cash for a sound card which is a lot better anyways.
The other issues are fairly minor and I just don't think it warrants at the price taking off too many points. Compared to most Z77 motherboards that fall around $120 or higher, with this you can get a sound card and additional units to fix the problems. I am happy with it. I meant it to replace a broken board in my brothers computer, but instead I put it in my own system and I am fairly pleased. It's not perfect, but its still pretty good.If you need a motherboard, I would highly recommend it.
I have a Biostar TZ77A motherboard. Practically no review sites have reviewed this board, and being that LGA 1155 is starting its slow phasing out its doubtful any of them ever will. So to help people considering to buy this motherboard I thought I would post my personal review of this motherboard.
Rating: 7/10
PROS:
Z77 Chipset, allows full features of overclocking.
I bought the board for a total of $60. Amazing price
4 RAM slots
Plenty of PCI and PCI-E ports
The debug LED on board after booting will show the CPU temperature in real time.
Uses a HYBRID ISL6367 PWM chip. This helps to reduce power consumption and better manage the power draw of the processor. (See Other Thoughts)
Feels really sturdy. Unlike my old ASrock Extreme 4-M which felt like the weight of its parts would snap it in half.
I actually like the BIOS. Mouse doesn't work well, but it still seems pretty good. Anyone who is used to using a keyboard in BIOS will feel right at home.
CONS:
This board definitely has some issues that I think Biostar needs to address. First, let me point at that we have another motherboard manufacturer lying about the hardware on board. I am talking about the power phases. Printed directly on the motherboard, it says "8 Phase CPU Power". This is a complete lie. It makes use of a ISL6367, which details a maximum of 6-Phases for CPU or Memory and a single additional phase that can be used for a few different components. This chip only allows for a maximum of 7-phases. While its possible there is a second chip capable of working with this one under the heat spreaders, I question if they would add another chip given the added cost.
Max FSB increase I have been able to get stable is 103. Anything higher causes instability. This is relatively low compared to others which can potentially hit 110. The motherboard does give itself a bump in speed ranging from .25-.50Mhz though, and for an LGA1155 system its really not terrible.
I find the placement of the LED to be a bad choice. My graphics card completely covers it up, but it is still easily view-able diagonally. However, the BIOS battery is right beside it, and I think they should be switched. It would get the LED about an inch further from the GPU. That would be enough in my system to make it completely view able. So it seems a poorly thought out placement.
As others have mentioned on websites, this board has audio trouble. I question if the audio chipset is about to go out. Using the Audio header to connect to audio ports on the front of my case do not seem to be functioning. Using the back audio ports I get audio, but it is anything but clear. It sounds like it has a lot of interference and other noise. For a fairly high end onboard audio codec, this shouldn't be happening. Many other motherboards with the same audio chip do not report this problem. Biostar claims to use a feature called "Clean Tone 2" which is just an added capacitor on each audio channel to help remove noise. I think there is something fundamentally wrong with their audio setup and they attempt to fix it with a few extra capacitors, but it doesn't work. So if you buy this board expect you may need to use HDMI or a sound card for audio.
Onboard SPDIF header might as well not exist. For the price it costs to get one, you can buy a full sound card.
Seems to have s little compatibility issues with my AMD Radeon HD 7850s, but it might have been a different issue. It only came up while trying to overclock the FSB, and the system wasn't stable at higher than 103 anyways so its not much of a concern.
Cannot use CPU offset to lower CPU voltage. Only increase voltage. It might have issues overclocking. I cannot tell you for sure. I think my i7-3770k is defective for a few reasons, but at first I got it to 4.3Ghz stable without a voltage increase, and the stability vanished despite passing stress tests. So I think the board will overclock well, but it might not. Its default max voltage for an i7-3770k is 1.250v, and stress testing at 4.3Ghz showed it never passed 1.188v. This is in the default voltage mode though, using "Voltage Offset" the voltage for some reason tends to run higher even without increasing it.
Final Thoughts
Alright so with such a long list of cons, you are probably wondering why I gave it
a 7 out of 10. Well for one thing the price is excellent for what you get. It has some issues, its not perfect, but I only paid $60, right now its selling for $80 and that still seems a fair price to me.
I have mentioned the ISL6367 PWM chip twice before. The power design would push this down an additional egg, but having a hybrid design counters it. ASrock completely lies about their power design saying its digital, but its really analog. Digital and hybrid are better than analog, hence why its an advertised feature. Well this board might lie about having an 8-phase CPU power design, but it has a hybrid power design and doesn't even mention it. For those of you unsure what this means, pretend electricity is water flowing in the PC. The more phases, is like adding more channels for the water to flow through making it more stable and flow better. Analog design is like just that, you have streams nothing more. Digital is like you have the streams but you also have complete control over the incoming water so you control how much comes into those streams better. Hybrid is in between, and like you can have some effect on the incoming water but not completely control.
Long story short, it allows for more stable overclocking, and I think this makes up for the lies on the number of phases.
The audio chipset would be a bigger deal a few years ago. If it goes out, I do plan to send it to be fixed. But like a lot of people I use HDMI for video and audio and don't worry about the sound card so much. I am getting a sound card for SPDIF for a wireless headset I have, but with how cheap this board is I have extra cash for a sound card which is a lot better anyways.
The other issues are fairly minor and I just don't think it warrants at the price taking off too many points. Compared to most Z77 motherboards that fall around $120 or higher, with this you can get a sound card and additional units to fix the problems. I am happy with it. I meant it to replace a broken board in my brothers computer, but instead I put it in my own system and I am fairly pleased. It's not perfect, but its still pretty good.If you need a motherboard, I would highly recommend it.
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