ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe Review: Redefining the ITX Gaming PC

[siopao1984]

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Package and Bundle

The P8Z77-I Deluxe - Overall a very functional layout with the standout item being the 8-pin EPS connector and vertically fitted daughterboard for the voltage regulators. Traditionally, ITX motherboards have been fitted with the bare minimum of power circuitry due to space and budget constriants, ruling out the possibility of high TDP operation.

At the I/O panel area, we get a generous eight USB ports (Four of them USB 3.0), triple display connectivity (single HDMI, DP, DVI-D), Gigabit LAN, Wifi/Bluetooth 4.0 connectors, two eSATA 3GB/s and buttons for actuating Clear CMOS/BIOS Flackback functions. Although there are only three audio jacks at the rear, 8-channel audio can still be achieved if the side speakers are connected to the front panel jacks.

Onboard SATA comes directly from the Z77 PCH, with the white ports for 6Gb/s operation.

No obvious anamolies underneath - and we have the soldering points of a full PCIe 3.0 x16 slot. Actually instead of Z77, ASUS could have used a stripped down/marginally less expensive Z75 PCH instead since there is no SLi/CrossFireX action here.

Although this is not something you'll see on most ITX setups, the mounting of a 140mm Thermalright Archon CPU tower was not obstructed by the VRM daughterboard.

Depending on the size of the enclosure, we can fit a dual slot graphics card like the HD 7970 (the ASUS board does come with Lucid MVP for fps boosting voodoo). Clearance from the CPU socket is pretty good too, even with a large heatsink used here..

Read more: ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe Review: Redefining the ITX Gaming PC by VR-Zone.com

[siopao1984]

ASUS didn't compromise on the quality of the board, opting to use best in class I/Cs like Intel WG82579V PHY (Gigabit LAN), ASMedia ASM1042 (USB 3.0) and Realtek ALC898 (audio) for the input/outputs. There is also a MEMOK! watchdog which can be helpful during memory overclocking.



Here we see a mini-PCIe slot housing a Broadcom BCM943228 802.11a/g/b/n + Bluetooth 4.0 chipset with a 2x1 antennas (up to 300Mbps)







On to the DIGI+ VRM daughterboard itself, we observe a 8+2 phase design (CPU and iGPU), driven by a Intel VR12 compliant IR3538 PWM and passively cooled by a small heatsink.















We don't really agree with the choice of PCIe release connector, which can hard to reach during the removal of a long dual slot card.

[siopao1984]

UEFI Bios

With the ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe, we get a full fledged UEFI BIOS with the same bells and whistles as its larger counterparts.





Depending on the level of user proficiency, there are manual CPU/memory clock control settings as well as auto overclocking/predefined profiles.





All the essential voltage adjustments and load line calibration options are available to get the best overclock out of your CPU and memory.









Up to eight user defined profiles can be stored to and loaded from the CMOS.





Software Suite

You'll also get the same many faceted AI Suite software on the P8Z77-I Deluxe as its bigger and more illustrious brothers, making tuning motherboard parameters a breeze from the Windows Desktop.











Like most retail Z77 boards, a Lucid Virtu MVP license is included in the package, allowing for the IGP to work in tandem with discreet GPU for Intel Quick Sync and energy saving. HyperFormance (currently largely only useful as a benchmark cheat until the application support list is improved) and Virtual Vsync (keeps in-game Vsync without FPS drop) are its other features.

[siopao1984]

Test Setup



CPU:
Intel Core i5-3570K @ 4.6GHz 1.26V (linpack stable)

Motherboards:
ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe (ITX) BIOS 0408
ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe (ATX)

Memory:

G.Skill RipJawsZ 2133MHz DDR3 16GB Kit

Power Supply:
Cooler Master Silent M Power 1000W

Storage:
OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS Edition 240GB (SATA)
Kingston V100+ 96GB (USB)

Graphics Cards / Drivers:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB

Operating System:
Windows 7 SP1 with latest patches


By just raising the CPU core voltage to 1.26v, we managed a 4.6GHz overclock out of our Core i5-3570K, which is above average for Ivy Bridge. We had no problems running the G.Skill RipJawsZ kit at its rated 2133MHz XMP 1.3 profile as well.



Benchmarks



CPU Tests









We didn't include another system for comparison - but the i5-3570K scores here are below average, implying that there could be a problem with the BIOS firmware (0408 from ASUS website) or CPU efficiency could have been compromised during the process of shrinking everything to fit (we did check that there was no throttling).



Memory Tests





With reference to the memory results achieved in our P8Z77-V Deluxe review (ran at 3770K @ 4.8GHz), the two benchmarks above show that the ITX board (3570K @ 4.6GHz) is slightly behind by about 5%, which works out to be roughly identical or even ahead once the CPU frequencies are normalized. This is not surprising as the electrical traces from the CPU to the memory slots are shorter on the smaller board.



3D Testing



This is the same card in the GIGABYTE GTX 680 Windforce 3X 2GB review, overclocked to 1288/1552MHz. Then the SNB-E/Rampage IV Extreme combo we used got a Graphics Score of 3410, marginally lower than the 3464 here - very, VERY impressive considering that the R4E is one of the best PCIe tuned boards out there for benching, again probably to do with the shorter electrical traces on the P8Z77-I Deluxe.



USB 3.0 and SATA 3.0 Performance







Even with a slower CPU (ITX using 3570K @ 4.6GHz, ATX board using 3770K @ 4.8GHz), the P8Z77-I Deluxe trades paint with its larger ATX deluxe namesake. Fast running out of hyperboles to describe this board...



DPC Latency

DPC Latency is induced by faulty hardware or shoddy drivers/energy saving nonsense and causes audio/video drop-outs of real-time data like video streaming or FPS gaming. The P8Z77-I Deluxe showed no such hiccups while playing a 1080p Full HD YouTube video





CPU Load Line Calibration

Loadline calibration is the mitigation of voltage drops, which affects stability during overclocking. The ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe handled it well - something that most ITX motherboards with cost-cut VRM designs struggle with. In this case we used the Ultra-High (75%) setting in the BIOS, which doesn't cause voltage to overshoot the desired value (1.26v) and kept the overclock stable

[siopao1984]

Conclusion



Price: US$199.99 (NewEgg) / SGD$

If we were to look at the P8Z77-I Deluxe from a regular motherboard perspective, we would consider it to be above average sans the below average CPU efficiency during our testing (might be solved by a new BIOS if its not inherent from a hardware design). As an ITX offering however, it beats everything out there by a mile and truly redefines the ITX concept - that no longer, cooling dexterity permitting, will you have to compromise CPU/memory overclocking performance together with a complete feature set on a minature motherboard. Slap this motherboard in a good ITX enclosure with an unlocked Ivy Bridge processor, decent water cooling, low latency 2666MHz memory and dual GPU GTX690 / Radeon 7990, and you'll get a portable gaming machine for LAN parties that will be the envy of others.

Pros
Good PCB layout/design
Above-par overclocking abilities for ITX
Innovative 8+2 Phase VRM Daughterboard
Excellent Storage Performance
UEFI BIOS that doesn't frustrate like other brands
Bluetooth 4.0 + Wifi
All three onboard display connectors present for HD4000 IGP triple display operation


Cons
PCIe release clip hard to reach

[kenneth@atay]

nindot siya performance pang theater

[mr.nicejohn]

nndota sa board oi....nc info btw

[XeLiOs]

Nindut ni ipares sa Bitfenix Prodigy dah.