Five Z87 Motherboards For Your Mini-ITX Build, Reviewed

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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.

Energy, Heat, And Efficiency

The Z87E-ITX puts ASRock in the lead for lowest idle power consumption, while EVGA registers the highest idle and lowest full-load power numbers. Inconsistent Turbo Boost behavior could explain the small leads in a few benchmarks, though the Z87 Stinger's overall performance is just 1% above average.

Gigabyte’s Z87N-WiFi demonstrated high full-load power consumption, and showed us similarly higher core temperatures. With its processor interface nudged up close towards the graphics card, we credit cooler orientation with part of the heat increase.

High full-load power consumption hurts Gigabyte’s overall efficiency, while low full-load power consumption boosts EVGA’s average efficiency in spite of idle power issues.

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.