Intel Z87 Motherboard Review with Haswell: Gigabyte, MSI, ASRock and ASUS
by Ian Cutress on June 27, 2013 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- MSI
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- Asus
- Haswell
- Z87
- Shark Bay
- Lynx Point
Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H Conclusion
As the first Z87 motherboard to arrive through my door, I was not entirely sure what I should be expecting. I had been briefed on the merits of Haswell and Z87, but by and large we were going to see the next evolution of the platform mainly from the point of Flex IO and another CPU cadence step.
I asked Gigabyte for a motherboard in the $200 +/- 10% range, and they kindly provided the Z87X-UD3H. At first glance the motherboard looks unassuming, unlike some of the others tested in this review. With this price point being a fulcrum point between the enthusiast models and the more budget conscious, it is important to step off on the right foot, and I am glad to say Gigabyte are moving in the right direction.
In a nutshell, we have a base Z87 motherboard in a PCIe 3.0 x8/x8 + PCIe 2.0 x4 configuration, featuring eight SATA 6 Gbps (six Intel, two from controller), two eSATA 6 Gbps ports, a total of ten (4+6) USB 3.0 ports, an Intel NIC, Realtek ALC898 audio, and a full gamut of video outputs. Also on board we have a TPM, a COM port, a PCI slot, voltage read points, power/reset/Clear_CMOS buttons and a two digit debug.
The BIOS and Software have been updated for Z87, and are certainly in the right direction of where Gigabyte needs to be going in terms of modernization. As with any new chipset release there are a few issues to iron out, which will hopefully be the focus for the internal design teams for the next few weeks at least. Nonetheless overclocking performance was quite good, with our automatic options giving good stability in the mid 80C range and manual overclocks giving a more than comfortable 4.6 GHz at reasonable voltage.
Performance from the Z87X-UD3H was helped along by the motherboard automatically applying MultiCore Turbo during our normal benchmark suite, matching the other motherboards within statistical variation. I was quite pleased to see the Gigabyte pull less than 500W during our dual-GPU power test. One initial downside of our performance testing came from a rather unsteady DPC Latency which was jumping around even at idle, but this was the result of the pre-release BIOS. Updating to at least BIOS F5 from the GIgabyte website gives a more stable value similar to the other boards in this review.
The main critical point facing the UD3H in this review is from the competition. Every other motherboard in this review has a functionality ace up its sleeve – the MSI has a Killer NIC, the ASRock has 802.11ac, and the ASUS has DIP4 (Dual Intelligent Processors) alongside an awesome hardware/software combination. All three other boards also come with an upgraded Realtek ALC1150 audio codec compared to the ALC898 on the Gigabyte. On the counter argument, the UD3H is cheaper than the rest ($170/180 vs. $190+), and it depends on how relevant those extra features become and if they are worth spending the extra $10-$50.
From our pre-launch testing, the Gigabyte is a nice board to play with, and would satisfy almost every user looking for an ATX motherboard with some extra functionality over the standard Z87 chipset. The only downside is where the competition stand of pricing, and whether the UD3H really needed a ‘knockout feature’ of its own. For Z77 at this $180 price point the Z77X-UD5H was a polished product, and while chipset prices have increased since Z77 to Z87, a good shot around this price point is required. Gigabyte also has the Z87X-OC motherboard at around $200, which should be an interesting comparison.
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Mr Perfect - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
I was wondering the same thing. If all shipping Haswell boards have the faulty USB3, then this is a non-starter.Avalon - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Is it just me, or are these boards too expensive?The Asrock Z77 Extreme6 is $155 on Newegg, $169 w/Thunderbolt. Asrock Z87 Extreme6 is $220-$20 MIR.
The Gigabyte Z77 UD3H is $140 on Newegg. Gigabyte Z87 UD3H is $180.
You get a couple extra USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gb slots and Haswell support, but I don't understand how that makes mid range boards at best command low high-end prices.
Mr Perfect - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
My guess is it's just new vs old products at this point. The Z77 boards are old news and have had a year to fall in price. Meanwhile, the Z87s are shiny new toys that some people will pay a premium for.Rob94hawk - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
"As it stands the MSI BIOS looks like a higgledy-piggledy jumble to a new overclocker."Going from X38/775 to this I still haven't figured out what everything does.
nsiboro - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
Ian, kindly provide info/links to ASUS Z87-Pro 3xxx series BIOS.The website product page (download) is only showing 1xxx series BIOS.
Thanks.
blackie333 - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
Could someone please check/confirm whether USB 3.0 S3 wakeup bug also affects devices connected via additional(ASMedia 1074) onboard USB 3.0 hub ports available on Asus Z87-PRO stepping C1 board?Some people are suggesting that only USB 3.0 ports directly connected to Z87 chipset are affected by the bug.
chizow - Friday, June 28, 2013 - link
The PCIe lane config was the biggest deciding factor for me. I will only ever run 2-way SLI, so I wanted to maintain x8/x8 config for my 2x primary GPUs but wanted the flexibility of that 3rd slot for a PCIe SSD or PCIe PhysX card.Only the Asus and Gigabyte options offered that lane config, from what I saw both the MSI and Asrock designs go with x8/x4/x4 3.0 rather than x8/x8 3.0 + x4 2.0
The Gigabyte UD range was pretty vanilla, but I was OK with that, the Asus boards, although solid, offered a lot of features I would never need or use, like Wi-Fi.
I ended up with the Gigabyte Z87X-UD4 as it was cheaper than the comparable Asus offering Z87-Pro by quite a bit.
pandemonium - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
I love the thoroughness of these articles. Excellent job, guys!"ASUS’ reasoning is such that some of the Haswell i7-4770K CPUs, the ones that only just get into this category, will throttle the CPU speed when using the default Intel CPU cooler when MCT is enabled."
Who - buying a 4770K - will be using a stock cooler? What kind of rationality is that garbage? >.>
blackie333 - Saturday, June 29, 2013 - link
There can be some, maybe those waiting for a better cooler. But the question is why Intel is including cooler which isn't capable to cool the CPU and we still have to pay for it? It should be able to do it's job at least on default frequency.Anyway this problem is IMHO more an effect of Haswell heat transfer issue than poor quality of the stock cooler. If Intel could fix the CPU overheating issue the cooler should be good enough.
ven - Sunday, June 30, 2013 - link
why is that PCIe hub is present, many will prefer having a single device that will utilize all the bandwidth than having multiple devices choking with shared bandwidth, six SATA 6Gpbs is enough for most, with flex i/o and that hub removed gives x7 lanes and given this a Desktop board,msata will not be missed that much, so we can get tri-way SLI, i am little surprised that no manufactures choose this configuration.