Asus and Gigabyte sent us the two top overclocking motherboards in today’s round-up. And with performance essentially equal between all candidates, it would be easy for me to simply award those two products first and second place. Doing so wouldn’t account for differences in features and price, however.

ASRock let us know that its motherboard would sell for $220. Yet, when the product launched, it was $190. The original $220 price was reserved for a Wi-Fi-equipped version of the same product.
At the other end of the pricing scale, ECS matches ASRock’s dual networking capability in a fashion, though its network controllers are slightly-less expensive Realtek models. ASRock uses Intel. These two boards would also be equally priced if ASRock hasn't implemented a last-minute price drop. ECS improves its lot with low-cost Wi-Fi and Bluetooth controllers. ASRock only beats ECS as long as the Z87 Extreme6 sells for less than $200.
MSI’s Z87-GD65 Gaming can be purchased for $190, and we have no doubt the company will maintain its pricing structure. We believe it’s a slightly higher-quality product as well, though it’s impossible to overcome the fact that it offers fewer features.
The Asus Z87 Pro roughly matches ASRock’s apparent feature value by adding a fairly good Wi-Fi and Bluetooth solution. Higher stability, quality components like 5,000-hour-rated capacitors, and less conspicuous features (such as its USB BIOS Flashback IC) probably make up for its $20 price premium. We’re not afraid of radical price shifts from Asus; the company's prices usually go down following a launch. And those factors come together, making it easy for us to give the most stable motherboard in this round-up our stamp of approval.

Let’s also not forget that Asus is the only firm to accurately report DIMM voltage. Anyone who still sees a tie here might want to knock a couple of percent off of everyone else’s score after re-reading our firmware analysis pages.
Update (6/4): ASRock's Z87 Extreme6 Drops Again!
ASRock’s preemptive strike against pricing incredulity is to apply yet another $20 discount on top of the already-discounted price discussed above. That drops its Z87 Extreme6 to $170. Although I had to reserve any award for a $190 Z87 Extreme6 that might have shot back up to $220, a $170 price that might shoot back up to $190 makes me a lot more confident about the Z87 Extreme6’s high value.

We’re holding ASRock to this $170-$190 range for the next month as we prepare our next round-up.
Update (6/11): Gigabyte's Z87X-UD4H Surfaces (Or Was It There All Along?)
Number two in overclocking stability, Gigabyte’s Z87X-UD4H originally looked like a great product at too-high of a price. But the company claims to have known something we didn't: the board was available all along at Micro Center for $185. Compare the launch-day price of $190 for ASRock's Z87 Extreme6. As enthusiasts, we usually favor overclocking features over secondary network controllers. Gigabyte's question is whether it was more deserving of a value award on launch day. We answer with a resounding “Probably”. But the Micro Center price didn't show up in any of our searches before this round-up went live, and we have confirmation from Gigabyte that it won't be available elsewhere until next month. Without a way for us to verify Micro Center’s price history, we simply can’t know for sure.
What we do know is that hours before we published this article, ASRock’s Z87 Extreme6 price dropped to $170. Though a $185 Z87X-UD4H might have taken the value award ahead of a $190 Z87 Extreme6, ASRock’s price drop probably would have forced us to issue a matching award for both the Z87 Extreme6 and the Z87X-UD4H. We don't issue or retract awards retroactively though, so that point is now moot. Regardless, whether Gigabyte's attractive price at Micro Center is long-lived or a more recent development, the board now gets our recommendation as a top-value overclocking alternative.
- Haswell: Is Now The Best Time To Build?
- ASRock Z87 Extreme6
- Z87 Extreme6 Firmware
- Z87 Extreme6 Tuning Software
- Z87 Extreme6 Applications
- Asus Z87-Pro
- Z87-Pro Firmware
- Z87-Pro Tuning Software
- Z87-Pro Applications
- ECS Z87H3-A2X Extreme
- Z87H3-A2X Extreme Firmware
- Z87H3-A2X Extreme Tuning Software
- Z87H3-A2X Extreme Applications
- Gigabyte Z87X-UD4H
- Z87X-UD4H Firmware
- Z87X-UD4H Tuning Software
- Z87X-UD4H Applications
- MSI Z87-GD65 Gaming
- Z87-GD65 Gaming Firmware
- Z87-GD65 Gaming Tuning Software
- Z87-GD65 Gaming Applications
- Test Settings And Benchmarks
- Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Overclocking
- Picking Our First Z87-Based Winner
Could we see some MBs around the $130-$140 mark? They're the interesting ones IMO, and would toast most of these in terms of value.
Could we see some MBs around the $130-$140 mark? They're the interesting ones IMO, and would toast most of these in terms of value.
Yes, the CPU comes from Intel. Almost certainly it was cherry-picked. But this is why we didn't rely on these CPUs for our launch coverage--it makes a lot more sense to go to a source with hundreds of boxed processors on the bench to get a real sense for what Haswell will do in the wild. At least for this round-up, the variable changing is the motherboard. So, we derive as much meaning as possible with a review sample that hits 4.7 GHz on one board and 4.5 GHz on another.
OTOH, the launch coverage said that was at 1.2V, while this is 1.3V, so I guess a few hundred MHz extra is reasonable.
Lot more variation than on IB's review: http://media.bestofmicro.com/X/O/335580/original/image019.png
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/core-i7-4770k-haswell-review,3521-9.html
If you have one of the affected drives and can't be bothered to reconnect it when it goes offline, wait a couple weeks and buy a board from the new batch.
The differences between boards in today's review are overclocking, power consumption, and onboard features. None of those things will change with the new PCH batch, and firmware updates should improve both batches equally.
Can you guys please test 6 SSD in Raid 0 on these mobos ? this is the only Advantage of upgrading to a Haswell over ivy/sandy bridge.
Can you guys please test 6 SSD in Raid 0 on these mobos ? this is the only Advantage of upgrading to a Haswell over ivy/sandy bridge.
Haswell does have another pair of USB3.0 ports... I agree though, it's kind of disappointing.
Edit: ASRock has a 3 year warranty as I see now. Still happy with my choice when looking around the interwebz and seeing how people seem to really like the MSI board.
now only 2 things left to do:
1. wait a few months to wait for the C2-revision to proliforate so that I don't have weird USB3.0 annoyance
2. wait for a review on the high-end: z87 delux, sniper, M-power max, ROG extreme etc. just to see whether it's worth the price difference (at least to me )
UPDATE:
well, was hoping for slightly more out of MSI's gaming board, but it seems it can't fully satisfy the overclocker in me. still a damn nice board though. all in all it looks like once again ASUS and ASrock come out as the top players for this range. looking forward to seeing if a ROG Extreme is what I ultimately need/want
Since Haswell uses the same DMI2.0 bus between the CPU and chipset, total IO performance is capped to ~2GB/s... the equivalent of 4x USB3 ports or 3x SATA3 or one x4 PCIe 2.0 device.
From what I read, the z77 and z87 chipsets are interchangeable - a motherboard manufacturer could pair z77 with Haswell or z87 with SB/IB if they wanted to. The main thing that prevented Intel from reusing LGA1155 is FIVR.
This is simply not true. Desktop Richland has not yet launched. Desktop Richland drops into FM2, just like Trinity. So, when it does launch, we can revisit the FM2 market to see if there's a reason for another round-up. In the meantime here's a round-up of motherboards that'll support Richland: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/socket-fm2-motherboard-review,3337.html. Hope you enjoy!
Chris
Can you guys please test 6 SSD in Raid 0 on these mobos ? this is the only Advantage of upgrading to a Haswell over ivy/sandy bridge.
But most users (even in the enthusiast market) don't do that anyway. There are very few "storage enthusiasts" in the general "performance enthusiast" market. And for most of us, having more than two SATA 6Gb/s ports simply means our storage drives won't use up the SATA 6Gb/s port needed for our system drive.
I'd still like to see our storage guy add this controller to his next big article
It seems to me Asus teased something about a driver that would visually identify the location of sound sources on screen with [one of] their Z87 boards. Can you shed any light on this?
This is simply not true. Desktop Richland has not yet launched. Desktop Richland drops into FM2, just like Trinity. So, when it does launch, we can revisit the FM2 market to see if there's a reason for another round-up. In the meantime here's a round-up of motherboards that'll support Richland: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/socket-fm2-motherboard-review,3337.html. Hope you enjoy!
Chris
I don't know who dropped the ball but the launch of Richland was today. It is available for sale on multiple retail sites including Newegg, Aria, and Microcenter.
I didn't answer this earlier because I'm not a CPU editor. But since you're going on about bias, listen up: This was a motherboard review. Your comment has nothing to do with the topic, unless you can show me a new chipset upon which I can justify a roundup. Otherwise, the motherboard roundup you're requesting was published 8 months ago...http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/socket-fm2-motherboard-review,3337.html
Now, if we can find a group of guys with a high interest in an FM2 update, that would create a market for the new motherboard article. Does anyone else want to chime in with their opinions on an FM2 update?