ASUS Z87-DELUXE Pro Reviews

If you like its golden good looks, need oodles of USB and SATA ports, and don’t mind its slightly high price, Asus’ Z87-Deluxe is a good board to base a system around, especially if you want your desktop to double as a Wi-Fi hotspot with cutting-edge 802.11ac wireless abilities. Conversely, if you can live with a few less ports and want to save some money, MSI’s Z87 MPower Max sells for a good bit less, while sporting an mSATA slot, loads of onboard overclocking controls for hard-core tinkerers, and support for twice the amount of RAM (along with included RAM disk software). Both boards are packed with features, and on both, some are of questionable usefulness. The MSI board, though, comes with more useful accessories and cables and, we think, a few more substantive features for a little less dosh. It's our pick of this pair.

Sitting at the very upper echelon of the mainstream price bracket at nearly $300, our only real complaint about the Deluxe is its relative positioning against competing solutions for people who don’t need its full stack of features. ASUS even competes against itself with boards like the Z87 Pro, RoG Hero, and the even the Sabertooth. In the end though the Deluxe is called the Deluxe for a reason: it offers 802.11 ac support, the extra LAN controllers, more SATA ports, additional video outputs, all things that less expensive boards don’t include. The conductive polymer capacitors, and 16 PWM phases also making it one of the most powerful and durable in the sub-$400 segment. When it comes to a wide ranging, well implemented feature set, excellent overclocking options, a UEFI design to be proud of and a great layout, it’s almost impossible to find a comparable solution. With a huge list of pros and only minor hiccups, we are pleased to award the Z87 Deluxe a well-deserved Dam Good award.

The ASUS Z87-Deluxe has proven to be an incredible motherboard for the enthusiast user and it feels as though the BIOS is tremendous mature even though this is a very new product. While the $289 price point is far from cheap, ASUS has included a plethora of features on this motherboard. If you are looking for an excellent motherboard in the $150 range, the ASUS Z87-A shows to be an incredible performer as well. If you can leverage that feature set the ASUS Z87-Deluxe is worth every cent.