ASUS P8Z68-V PRO Pro Reviews

Now that we've tested a number of different LGA1155 mainboards with different chipsets and from different brands, we are quite sure that the ASUS ones are among the best. They come in nice-looking boxes with good accessories, are very well made and have convenient component layouts. With their handy PCB design and user-friendly EFI BIOS, these mainboards support cutting-edge technologies and are overall up to today's requirements. Moreover, ASUS offers a very wide product variety allowing you to find the model for your specific requirements and needs. We wouldn't say that ASUS mainboards are superior to the competition in everything, but they are surely among the leaders when it comes to the winning combination of features, performance and other factors.

We'll be covering the Z68 chipset in some detail in a future review, where things like Quick Sync and Intel Smart Response will get more airtime. From our brief benchmarking experience however, you can expect the scores on the Z68 to be competitive with the P67 (as expected), so it's not so much the performance, but the features that will be the main draw for this chipset.

The Asus P8Z68-V Pro that we have here today continues Asus has built with the 6 series chipset. The overall board’s layout is excellent with low profile heatsink and complete passive cooling. We love Asus continues to offer Bluetooth on the board and the extra SATA 6Gbps ports and USB 3.0 ports are much welcomed. As always, the board’s BIOS offers excellent interface via the UEFI and it is easy to navigate. Finally, for overclockers, you won’t be disappointed to as it has plenty of option and is extremely easy to overclock. In our short period with the board, we were able to overclock the processor to 4.9 GHz with air cooling. So there is definitely room for more. I think Asus has once again impressed us with the P8Z68-Z Pro.

The £170 ASUS P8Z68-V PRO carries on the fine tradition set by the company's P67 boards. A relatively small price premium over the P67 PRO gives you integrated graphics, Virtu multi-GPU usage and SRT technology, if you need it.

I know that prices for Z68 boards will be as low as $120 from some manufacturers, and as high as $350. The price difference in all these boards is similar to that of the P67—stability at high overclocks, features such as more and more SATA ports, increased support for better cooling, etc. Does that mean that the ASUS P8Z68-V PRO is a good buy? At $210, our only comparison so far in the P67 space that we've reviewed is the ASRock P67 Extreme6, which has 10 SATA ports, but minimal RAID, a lot more IO panel USB connectors, more in the box to come with the motherboard, arguably a worse BIOS, better USB performance, and a shorter warranty. It's a tough decision—people will like the ASUS board, of that I have no doubt. It's just a case of if it's got the right features for you as a consumer. Right now, the ASUS board is a good Z68 offering, but if you're in no rush, wait a few weeks to see if another board can rise to the top.

The big question is value. ASUS tells us that MSRP should come in around $205, not to exceed $209. The P8Z68-V Pro should be available today at e-tailers. The Intel SRT and Virtu features, even if immature at this time, add a lot of value to this motherboard, especially at the $205 price point. The overclocking was excellent, the stability was excellent, and the inflated scores were excellent. The feature is set is deep, the layout is near perfect, and this board will look purty in a case window. If you like being an early adopter and taking a little bit of risk, the P8Z68-V Pro is going to prove to be the basis of a fun build that will very likely turn out satisfying.

The ASUS P8Z68-V PRO is an interesting mid-range motherboard based on the new Intel Z68 chipset for your socket 1155 processor. The highlights of this product include the presence of three PCI Express x16 slots, four USB 3.0 ports, four SATA-600 ports, a Bluetooth receiver, two FireWire ports, and support for Lucidlogix Virtu technology. It is clearly targeted to the average user who wants “something extra” from a mid-range product. The main drawbacks of this motherboard are the fact that you will need to buy an adapter or a case with FireWire ports in order to be able to use the on-board FireWire ports, and that you need to disable two of the USB 3.0 ports, the two PCI Express x1 slots, and the eSATA-300 port in order to make the third PCI Express x16 slot work at x4 speed; otherwise it will work at x1 speed. The number of overclocking options is certainly limited when compared to high-end products, but they will satisfy the average user.

With full support for the Z68 chipset’s SSD caching and multi-GPU support, as well as a great layout and superb software, this is the Socket 1155 motherboard to beat.

Today we put the ASUS P8Z68-V Pro up against a $300+ Intel P67 motherboard. The ASUS P8Z68-V Pro brought everything to the table, held nothing back and was able to outperform a board that retails for nearly 50% more!

The performance of this board was excellent. It was fractionally faster at stock clock speeds than the similar ASUS P8P67 board, and I was able to take my Core i7 2600K processor 200MHz higher than I could with the older board. Functionally, this board is a standout. ASUS reserves some features for its top-end boards, but voltage measuring points, dual BIOS chips, chipset fans and the like really wouldn't add anything useful to this board's smorgasbord of features. I'd prefer ASUS use DIMM sockets with retaining latches on both sides, and a POST code display would be nice, but that's about all I can think of to add. At an MSRP of $209.00, this board is about $30 more than ASUS' equivalent P67 Express-based motherboard. If that's enough money to make a difference for you, skip a few meals and get this board instead. This price represents an excellent value.

The Asus P8Z68V Pro is the first of the Z68 boards we've come across and is essentially what we expected of the Sandy Bridge platform all along. The combination of iGPU and discrete graphics working together has made the P67 all but redundant unless you're a PC gamer only. The Smart Response technology is impressive, as is the Lucid Virtu software. The latter's power saving chops of particular import in these days of hugely over-powered graphics cards. Despite the performance, the setting up of the Smart Response array provided many hours of frustration. Hopefully the end user experience has now been ironed out though. There is also a question mark hanging over how well the Smart Response and Quick Sync video work together.

As far as Z68 boards go, ASUS’ P8Z68-V Pro should be at the very top of your list since we feel it offers a great mix of performance and user friendliness. At $209 this is not an out of this world value by any stretch of the imagination but it does offer one of the most well-rounded motherboard experiences currently available. In our opinion the P8Z68-V Pro is a competent motherboard that’s priced at just the right level to make it very appealing for people who didn’t jump onto the P67 bandwagon.