Technical Details
- LGA1155 socket for Intel 2nd Generation Core i7/Core i5/Core i3 Processors
- Intel Z68 Chipset
- EPU - System Level Energy Saving & Real-time Power Management for Superb Platform Power Efficiency
- TPU - Increase Platform Performance Instantly with Self Optimized Settings while retaining Full System Stability
- BT GO! (BT Turbo Remote) - Beyond your Imagination of what Bluetooth can do!
- 2 x Intel Gigabit LAN
- Intel Smart Response Technology - Experience the Benefits of both SSD and HDD
- LucidLogix Virtu -Utilize both iGPU and Discrete graphic card at same time
Product Description
Intel Z68 Smart Response EPU Lucidlogix Virtu GPU UEFI BIOS
Customer Reviews
By Grant A. Bugher
I just built a full system around this board: i7-2600K, 256GB Crucial m4 SSD, 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3-1600, and two eVGA nVidia 580 GTXs in SLI.
The pros: It's got all the features you need for both general use and enthusiast (overclocking) use. Things like QuickSync, USB 3.0, and SATA-6, as well as full overclocking controls. If you're the type to put a window on your case, it has a nice blue color scheme and well-designed swoopy-looking heatsinks. The layout is good for cable management, too -- it's the first time I've been able to assemble a computer with no cords hanging out above the motherboard. It has a *ton* of USB ports, too, including two rear 3.0s and a header for two front 3.0s. The bundled AI Suite II software actually allows full control of overclocking settings (even detailed ones) from inside Windows, and controls them live, without rebooting. There is a CMOS Reset button on the board (illuminated even!) for when you screw things up.
The potential pitfalls: Those swoopy-looking heatsinks are tall, and inconveniently located at the top of the motherboard. If you plan to put a watercooling radiator on the top of your case they may get in the way (I had to drill some new screw-holes to do this. Also, it has not done so well for me as regards BCLK overclocking -- I get memory corruption at only 103.0, which is not much at all (though it fully supports multiplier overclocking, so my i7-2600K is running at nearly 5GHz without issues despite this problem. In addition, the Vengeance RAM is not a stupendous overclocker anyway, and I'm running an SLI system, so I can't necessarily even blame the board. Still, if you really want to crank BCLK to 107+ I'd suggest a Maximus IV instead.
The surmountable problems: There are some known issues with this board. For one, the bundled software won't install properly on Windows 7 x64 without downloading a patch that ASUS makes almost impossible to find (you need it even with the latest version of the software from the website, and the patch isn't listed under this board on the site, so it takes some serious Googling. For another, it often fails to recover from sleep/hibernate if you don't disable "Internal PLL Overvoltage" in BIOS (well, UEFI), which defaults to on if you use any of the overclocking features. It will sometimes loop on reboots (i.e. reboot itself 3-4 times before POSTing) if you don't enable Wake on PCIE in the APM controls -- apparently the board counts *itself* as a PCIE device. If you need more than 2 SATA-6Gbps devices, you have to enable the Marvell controller, which lengthens your POST time (it has an Option ROM screen at boot that you can't disable) though if 2 SATA-6 and 4 SATA-3 devices is enough for you you can just turn the Marvell controller off and avoid this problem. And finally, there is an issue where Bink video (used by many games) will have the sound skip if CPU C1E is enabled in BIOS, and you really don't want to disable that (it will drive your power use and CPU heat dissipation way up) -- this said, this is a Bink bug and will hopefully be fixed in the near future.
On one hand, that sounds like a lot of crap to deal with, and that's why I docked it a star -- ASUS needs to get its act together and come up with a BIOS that fixes this stuff, and a version of AI Suite II that actually installs properly. On the other hand, there are workarounds for all of it, and as a result I have a rock solid computer that's very fast, has every feature I could possibly want, and costs 1/3 less than the ASUS Extreme-Z.
Add to Cart
0 comments:
Post a Comment