ASUS Z87-A Pro Reviews

It seems that cutting costs can lead to a small disadvantage when it comes to overclocking Haswell CPUs. That's certainly true with the Z87-A, albeit only by 100MHz, but the MSI Z87-G45 Gaming costs just £5 more and managed to get to 4.7GHz with relative ease. Apart from this there's also the matter of poor results in our benchmarks. None were significantly worse but the Z87-G45 Gaming was noticeably faster. Other than this there's very little between the two motherboards. The MSI board has a couple of extra features such as a CMOS clear switch and mSATA port and it has more pizazz in the looks department too. That's not to say the Z87-A is a bad motherboard - it's noticeably cheaper than anything that performs significantly better, has a good layout and packs all of Asus' useful software. Overall we'd opt for the MSI Z87-G45 Gaming, though, despite the Z87-A's low price tag; it's faster, features an excellent EFI and has potential for higher overclocks.

ASUS always pushes the limits on its top end boards but getting a mainstream board can sometimes be a snore fest. We are happy to say that this board definitely surprised with its capability and its ability to do pretty much everything a higher priced board could do in terms of performance. It does of course lack some extra features, but it also comes at a lower cost.Knowing now that the clock for clock performance is within a few percentage points of the top end board, we can definitely say that this board would be excellent on any gaming rig, or even a standard home desktop or workstation. One thing to keep in mind is that every board or component has its place. For those who need a board that simply plugs in and works, but is still capable of some overclocking and gaming, this board is a great choice. Just be aware that it lacks some of the fancier features you find on higher end boards. If those features are important to you, a something like a Z87-powered ROG board would be a better fit. All in all, this board is basic from a feature standpoint, but a good choice for users who simply need a board that works and will do the job. This board will exceed expectations as the performance at default is great, as is the potential for easy overclocking and power savings for an ultimate budget platform.

The ASUS Z87-A motherboard showed to be an incredibly stable piece of overclocking equipment and carried with it an "upgraded experience" when coming from working with the latest Z77 chipset equipped motherboards. If the Z87-A represent the "low end," we think that ASUS has likely nailed down a very solid footprint in the Z87 market. The fact that you can use older LGA 1155 and LGA 1156 cooling solutions with LGA 1150 motherboards means that there are plenty of cooling solutions on the market for you to purchase to try to push your Haswell to the limit. The ASUS Z87-A is a great value at its price point and it will likely have everything that a lot of us need for solid Haswell overclocking; without all the stuff that we don’t need.