Previews - Asus (Intel) Z97-A

[HEXUS]

We take a peek at a motherboard bearing the next-generation chipset.

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[lumireleon]

overly a good looking board, resonably priced for SLI, BIOS is nice with graphs, DVI, HDMI, Display port and VGA is a nice option, price is good.

[Plasmastorm]

I usually budget 70-100 for a good mid range board for my customers. Looks like this is going to be a contender.

[CK_1985]

Does look nice, although perhaps a little crowded around the CPU socket? Could be fiddly with some coolers.

Interesting that M.2 and SATA-Express are coming onboard (no pun intended) at the same time... will be interesting to see which standard gains more traction of the two.

[lumireleon]

Does look nice, although perhaps a little crowded around the CPU socket? Could be fiddly with some coolers.

Interesting that M.2 and SATA-Express are coming onboard (no pun intended) at the same time... will be interesting to see which standard gains more traction of the two.

go with liquid cooling costs same as a massive fan + low noise.

[wingtit]

I actually quite like the gold colour scheme of my Z87 Pro, the new scheme is less exciting, but this is only a basic board so we will have to wait and see what the enthusiast boards are like.

[Brian224]

Interesting that M.2 and SATA-Express are coming onboard (no pun intended) at the same time... will be interesting to see which standard gains more traction of the two.

I can't help thinking that, from a hobbyist's viewpoint the backward compatibility of SATA-Express will be more useful than the M.2 connector, allowing drives from a previous build to be re-used. I have already missed one generation of on-board storage, ignoring the mSATA slot in the middle of my current motherboard in favour of a 2 1/2" SSD that can easily be re-used elsewhere later.