At $149.99 online, the Z97-A sits right in the sweet spot for enthusiast-oriented motherboards. It may not have all the bells and whistles found on pricier offerings, but it covers the essentials, and it does a good job of tapping into all of the goodnes...
Abstract: There's a physical power button on the board, which is always welcome in our books. The expandability is rather decent too, with three full length PCI-E slots available. As usual bandwidth is limited here; occupy slot one and it'll run at 3.0 x16. Occupy...
Sitting in the mid-$100 range, the ASUS Z97-A is one of the cheapest ATX boards we've looked at to date. There's no denying that when you move down to boards at this price level, you do lose a lot of the big fancy features that are seen on boards priced ...
Abstract: Over the years, ASUS has refined its product stack to include the ROG line for the gamer and hardcore enthusiast, the TUF series for those that want the utmost in reliability over the long term, the WS series for the professional, and last but not least, ...
Regrettably, we - and the industry in general - are not really in a position to properly impress you with the capabilities of this new generation of motherboards. The addition of the M.2 slot and the SATA Express ports to the Z97 chipset are pretty dar...
ly the ASUS Z97A's Layout is well thought Once more very practical are the angled SATA connectors, of which there are four Unfortunately there are now power and reset buttons and there is also no CLRCMOS button, which in the end is reasonable, since ASUS...
Asus certainly hasn't held back in offering the best bang for the buck it could muster with the Z97-A, especially when you consider it's under a tenner cheaper than the previous Z-87-A and has a superior hardware and software set. If you are in the marke...
The easiest way to rate value is comparing performance to price. But that doesn't inspire anyone to add extras like USB and SATA controllers, which improve the flexibility of a platform, but don't move the needle on speed. We have to think more broadly th...
Abstract: Yesterday Intel introduced its new processors which are a refresh of the current Haswell chips. Along with these new processors two new motherboard chipsets are being introduced, the H97 and the Z97. For many of the motherboard manufacturers this is the...
Subtle & professional aesthetics, Great value, Solid performer, Plenty of storage options including M.2 & SATA Express support, Great performance, Clean & easy to use BIOS
Brown PCB
Last year we reviewed the corresponding ASUS mainstream model in the Intel 8 Series and, whilst impressive from a feature/performance standpoint, we were less than enthused by the styling of the Z87-A. We’re really pleased to note however that this ne...
