Five Z87 Motherboards For Your Mini-ITX Build, Reviewed
Features
published
Z87 rules the PC enthusiast market by exposing the Haswell architecture's full feature set. We're particularly interested in mini-ITX-based platforms able to integrate Z87 in a compact form factor. Five boards contend for supremacy of compact computing.
Results: Productivity
MSI's Z87I slightly leads in 3ds Max and ABBY FineReader, but again by an amount that you’d probably need a performance chart to recognize. EVGA’s Z87 Stinger sweeps Visual Studio by a similar margin.
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Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
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28 Comments
Comment from the forums
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PEJUman Why would one pay extra for ASUS's power delivery if it didn't yield any additional OC/DRAM stability? In the end, ASRock features & cheaper price should be a better option here.Reply -
Crashman
Yes, they've sent one for another article. If the site did multiple items per manufacturer the article would take weeks to finish. That wouldn't be a problem if all Tom's Hardware did was motherboards :p12025866 said:Here is another MSI ITX board
ASRock's cheaper features also made it a competitor with the cheaper boards for the value award. Since it competed well for both awards, it had to get a different award.12025873 said:Why would one pay extra for ASUS's power delivery if it didn't yield any additional OC/DRAM stability? In the end, ASRock features & cheaper price should be a better option here.
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nukemaster While some may not like the layout, the Gigabyte and MSI layout should work well in some cases like the SG05 from SilverStone. The top mounted power and sata ports help keep wires out of the air flow path.Reply
More room between the PCI-E and CPU LGA is nice on the Asus as are all the features.
I am still running an older H55n usb3 24/7 and it has been quite stable and cool and low on power consumption. Shame that this new gigabyte board has higher power and temperature levels. -
xkm1948 Since most of them has built in Wi-Fi. Will it be better to include a Wi-Fi test column?Reply -
Crashman
We formerly had a controller reviewer, and I'd like to see someone take on this task again. A separate article on the controllers (with everything else identical) wouldn't tell you anything about the antennas included with different products, but antennas are cheaply replaceable.12025986 said:Since most of them has built in Wi-Fi. Will it be better to include a Wi-Fi test column?
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KrazyKap Is the Asus Z87 Pro the same as the Deluxe? Seems to be region specific but I can't find the difference. Help? I've just bought the Pro for myself as it is only slightly more than the MSI or Gigabyte options.Reply -
vertexx Let's just roll some dice and toss out some awards, eh? Couldn't help but laugh through the conclusion.Reply
Overall it's good to see the roundup. Would have liked to see post times. With SSD storage, motherboard post times are now becoming the longer wait in a system boot up.
Also interested in thoughts on reasons for Z87 mobos for a standard non-overclocking build. For a non-overclocked gaming ITX PC, say with an I3 or low-end I5, are there any compelling reasons to pay the Z87 premium over, say an H81, which can run $100 cheaper? -
rolli59 Nice review and boards, conclusion is all good buy's depending on what features you want except the EVGA.Reply