First Look: ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe ITX Motherboard

[siopao1984]

---

Mini-ITX motherboards are essentially stripped down variants of their full sized counterparts, doing away with non-essential expansion options and using "good enough" components. In recent times ASUS has dabbled in small form factor systems with great success - their Republic of Gamers GENE series of mATX motherboards has a cult following of enthusiast builders. With Ivy Bridge processors looming on the horizon, the P8Z77-I Deluxe represents the motherboard giant's latest salvo for the mindshare of performance ITX system buyers.

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 blue 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: http://vr-zone.com/articles/first-look-asus-p8z77-i-deluxe-itx-motherboard/15357.html#ixzz1r1qp4id
t

[siopao1984]

ASUS didn't compromise on the quality of the board, opting to use best in class I/Cs like Intel WG82579V PHY, ASMedia ASM1042 and Realtek ALC898 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 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]

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 out of your overclock.





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





Stay tuned for our full overclocking review of the board with an Ivy Bridge processor!

[OmegaRed]

paytera ani na mobo oi..

[Fafnir]

*rainbow drool*

hope they'll continue making awesome boards, will upgrade when haswell chips come out.

[eXpLoDe]

boom! asus itx mobo+TR-Silverarrow or H100 +highend VC+bitfinex prodigy. how i wish... only in my dreams...

[authencation]

ayosa aning boarda oi.. haha