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The Asus P8Z68-V LX has proven to be a very capable, stable and reliable motherboard in our tests over the last week. The main talking point will be the incredibly competitive price point, as it retails for under £90 inc vat in the United Kingdom, at time of press.
At this price, we need to be willing to overlook some of the minor ‘niggles' … such as all the SATA ports being mounted vertically, rather than in parallel with the PCB. While The LX supports Crossfire configurations the secondary slot only operates in x4 bandwidth mode. This is the same as the Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 which we reviewed in September, and while on paper it sounds a deal breaker, in the real world it doesn't make a huge amount of difference.
Everything considered however, we would expect most people looking for a high end dual card system configuration will be aiming higher up the price range anyway.
The UEFI bios is extremely intuitive and maintains the high standards we would expect from Asus, even at a budget price point. Overclocking the 2600k proved incredibly easy and we coaxed 4.6ghz from the processor with little effort and a minor voltage increase. Higher would likely be possible, with improved cooling and higher voltages. We found the LX would recover well from an unstable overclocked state, after a few reboots, without user interaction. We would recommend additional airflow at overclocked settings however as the motherboard isn't equipped with many heatsinks.
The bundle is slightly disappointing. Asus for instance only include 2 SATA cables which seems a little oppressive, even at this bargain price point. Including two additional cables would only cost ASUS a couple of pence for every product sold and could surely be factored into the current price.
In regards to overall performance, we have no concerns at all with the P8Z68-V LX board design. SATA 3 performance for instance is as good as we would expect, right up there with the flagship motherboards. Of course this might sound strange, as every SATA 3 rated port should be identical, right? In our testing, we find this isn't the case with some minor variances between products and controller.
There is no doubt that the P8Z68-V LX is one of the best value motherboards for the Z68 platform. It might not come fully loaded when compared against their flagship products, but Asus have cleverly focused on the key enthusiast selling points. Stability, all round performance and a very intuitive bios implementation.
You can buy this motherboard direct from Overclockers in the UK for £89.98.
Pros:
- A fantastic price point to achieve.
- Good build quality.
- Bios is capable.
- rock solid.
- good SATA 3 performance.
- decent overclocking board.
Cons:
- Bundle is less than impressive.
- not the most attractive design (lack of heatsinks doesn't help)
Kitguru says: One of the best value for money Z68 motherboards on the market today.
Yeah, hard to grumble for £90. AMD motherboards are still expensive for their high end processors. always a problem iMO.
Good cheap board, but I think someone buying a 2600k might spend £40 more. Surprised on the lack of heatsinks, but it looks as if it doesnt effect overall performance which is good to hear.
I am holding fire on a new system until summer next year, i expect a new range by then,.
one silly question why they have diff clips for blue and black ram slots
Thanks, been waiting for a review of this for a while. I agree the sata cable deal is bad, two cables? they probably cost 10c to asus. immore interested in the board though for a potential 2500k build.
Yeah, thats unusual, two different clips for the memory? maybe they use left over stock for these boards? not that it really matters.
+ meant to add in the last post. i dont mind about the bundle, i have tons of satacables. two is ok for the price. did you use them for the SATA testing? I bought an asrock board earlier this year and they supplied some terrible cables which killed my drive performance (by 100mb/s)
What ASROCK board was that Ian? never had a problem with any cables on ASROCK boards. Yes, used one of the cables they supplied for the PATRIOT drive testing. good quality.
If I was using this board im afraid id want a huge fan over it at all times, especially when overclocking. there are no heatsinks at all around the CPu socket, and those resistors will get very hot under load.