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The Asus Z87 Sabertooth is a killer motherboard which proved very stable throughout the last week of extensive stress testing, delivering excellent all round performance results.
The Thermal Armor has proven popular with a select audience of enthusiast users, ensuring the board gets plenty of cooling under high load situations. The optional fans are supplied if you want to push voltages to the limit, although we found that we didn't need to use them ourselves during regular overclocking.
We do love the Asus BIOS configurations. They haven't changed their layout style dramatically since the last generation, meaning long term users will feel immediately at home when navigating. If you read our other review today on the GA-Z87X-OC you will already have seen the dramatic changes that Gigabyte have implemented for the Haswell platform, a long overdue move ahead for them.
ASUS didn't really need such a dramatic change and veterans of their BIOS layouts will feel immediately at home. Most of the settings follow similar guidelines to the BIOS they implemented with Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge products.
Overclocking the ASUS board is straightforward, and we had no problems running with a 2,400mhz XMP profile on the Corsair memory, and pushing new ultra high performance G.Skill Trident X memory to around 3,000mhz. There are plenty of voltage and power delivery options to negate DROOP concerns, most of which are found in the DIGI+ Power Control panel.
The CPU Load-Line Calibration menu works very well and ensures stability can be meet at higher clock speed under load. When combined with the Power Phase Control and Power Duty Control settings, there is every possibility of getting high, stable overclocks.
Both USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps performance met our expectations, we managed to score close to 280 MB/s from a Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB flash drive and around 550 MB/s sequential throughput from the WildFire Solid State Drive.
The Z87 chipset has all SATA 3 connectors, rather than leaving the end user fumbling through a user manual to find out which will work best with a new Solid State Drive. The ASUS Sabertooth has two additional SATA connectors over the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC, thanks to the incorporation of an additional ASMedia 6GBps controller.
We had no problems pairing this board up with the Intel Core i7 4770k processor. We achieved a prime stable overclock of 1GHZ while maintaining a reasonable thermal curve. Our 4770k sample runs very hot, even with 1.225 volts and we hope to get our hands on another sample in the near future to see if this is common, or just isolated. Thankfully the Corsair H100i coped with the hot running chip delivering a stable playing field at 4.5ghz.
The 4770k is undoubtedly faster than the 3770k on a clock per clock basis, however our 3770k sample overclocks quite easily to 5ghz and runs cooler than the 4770k engineering sample that Intel sent us. At 5ghz the 3770k will clearly outclass the 4.5ghz 4770k in a variety of duties.
This makes it a little difficult for us to recommend that everyone head online and spend a lot of money moving to the new 4770k, especially if your 3770k runs cool and overclocks to 4.8ghz – 5ghz without hassle. We have spoken to several system builders in the United Kingdom this week and they tell us that they will be not pushing their 4770k systems past 4.4ghz and they may even aim closer to 4.2ghz.
Intel have made a lot of progress in regards to power consumption and the onboard HD4600 graphics is much more capable than the previous iteration (check out the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC review we published today). That said, I don't know many people who would be buying a 4770k and not pairing it up with a discrete graphics card for more serious duties. I can't think that an enthusiast user would adopt a 4770k for a media center system either.
The recommendation for the move to a new Haswell 4770k system is a little more difficult if you are currently running with an overclocked 3770k. The benefits just don't seem tangible enough to warrant the cost of a new motherboard and processor. We would recommend saving your pennies until the next generation.
- Built to take overclocking abuse.
- Stable under load.
- Fully loaded BIOS.
- Intuitive layout.
- 8 x SATA 6Gbps connectors
- coped easily enough with memory close to 3,000mhz.
Cons:
- Our 4770k sample runs hot over 1.225 volts, limiting the overclock we could get from the ASUS Z87 Sabertooth board.
- A post at 4.9ghz was possible, but the Corsair H100i couldn't handle the high voltage. (temperatures of 100c+).
Kitguru says: This board will prove popular with the ASUS audience. The BIOS hasn't been changed too much, and will feel immediately intuitive to an ASUS veteran. Plenty of overclocking settings, including class leading voltage regulation options. Superb motherboard.
Is the tuf armor not restrictive though? seems to block a lot of the spots id like to get access too.
THe previous generations of this board have been superb, ive owned a few. My last one failed when I spilt coke over the top of my case and a bit of it hit the pcb. my own fault.
Not got the cash right now for an upgrade but will be later in the year. this is top of my list.
Not really that exciting a board – but rock solid. I want to see the ROG versions.
ITs a great board, what are you talking about Anusha. Its a more laid back colour scheme, hardly matters, most of it will be covered in a system build.
I do want tsee the ultra high end asus boards though.
4770k is a bit of a let down unless I couldnt afford a graphics card.
overall nice board, but im happy with my 5.0ghz 3770k
4770k is a flop. Intel are clearly focused on the mobile platform now and power reduction rather than moving forward in the high end and giving people a huge step up. anyone with a 3770k wont need to move,unless for some reason they need onboard graphics !
disappointing CPU launch, but great motherboards from the guys. I like how they have ditched the old SATA standard now instead of 3 or 4 useless ports for SSD.
4770k isn’t that bad, but I agree, its not a huge step forward. it may help those peoplee who buy a lower end processor and cant afford a graphics card, but who the F*CK will want a 4770k for onboard graphics performance? its irrelevant really.
Ive seen a lot of reviews today and there seems to be a huge variance on the overclocks, which would suggest the new manufacturing process isn’t quite at the level it should be. ill stay with my 3570k for a while longer as its working well with the 7950 I have.
How can it support Quad-SLI with only three PCI slots?
@ Billy. some nvidia cards have two GPU’s, so two of them in a pairing – quad SLI.
Example…..:
2x GTX 690 = 2×2 GPU = Quad-SLI
4x GTX Titan = 4×1 GPU = 4Way-SLI
I guess the motherboard manufacturers will be really pi55ed about the “huge” sales coming their way lol. If I were them I’d play a little with Intel for the next chipsets. Intel is going down as they follow their ambitions rather the market. They should let ARM alone and focus on the categories that made them what they are.
It’s really scary reading about all that heat coming off and about that 100i that can hardly keep up at 4.5GHz+. What about the box cooler??!
A board packed for OC is an useless piece of cr0p when OC is impossible. Now it’s AMD move, if they have a single ace up their sleeve they’d better be pulling it. It’s time…