Fast And Cheap? Five Sub-$160 Z87 Motherboards For Enthusiasts

Round-ups
By
published

Intel’s Haswell architecture has mainstream leanings. And yet some of the motherboards out there are really high-end. Today we're looking at five platforms under the $160 mark that hopefully put some value back into being an enthusiast.

Z87X-UD3H Software

As with competing products, the Z87X-UD3H also includes a pile of freeware, shareware, and trial applications (nag-ware). Unlike competitors, the cFosSpeed packet-prioritization suite hasn’t been re-branded.

Gigabyte App Center links to the same applications as our previous review, including the @BIOS firmware update utility for Windows, USB Locker to control port access for USB drives, the EasyTune utility, On/Off Charge 2 for fast and/or silent (system off) charging of USB-connected devices, and EZ Setup for Intel’s new integrated applications.

Colin Brix explains the idea behind EZ-Setup in the following video:

Gigabyte EasyTune hasn’t changed noticeably from our previous description, though that description didn’t include a screenshot of its advanced menu. Here we find controls for base clock, integrated GPU ratio, CPU multiplier, and various voltage levels. I was able to confirm CPU settings functional through CPU-Z.

There’s a lot more to EasyTune, including overclocking profiles and fan maps, and anyone unfamiliar with these features might want to check them out.

TOPICS
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.