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Gigabyte Z87N-WiFi: Our Golden Mic Winner Takes a Bow

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2013-08-17_08-12-03_776

This year was the first year we have a Golden Mic winner in the motherboard category and it is time for this gem to shine. The Z87N is an mITX board build for the Socket 1150 or Haswell platform. It offers all the performance the Haswell platform brings in a small form factor package. Taking a cue from their excellent Z77N lineup, Gigabyte has kept the design along the same lines as the previous model and then added some nice new features.

(Quick apology to everyone, in my haste to get to the testing I seemed to have neglected to get board shots. Rather than take apart the system it is right now I will be using stock photos from Gigabyte.)

If this baord layout looks familiar to you, it should. The basic layout is pretty much identical to the H77N and Z77N boards from Gigabyte. This is actually a very good move for consumers and for Gigabyte. For consumers it means the design is one that is tested and proven to be reliable and stable. For Gigabyte it means they do not have to spend a bunch of money of developing a new design and this helps keep consumer costs lower.

For internal connections the Z87N has a USB 3.0 and 2.0 Header, Four SATA 3.0 connections as well as dual channel DDR3 slots, a PCIe x16 8174_bigslot and two PWM fan headers. The board sports a full rear IO panel;

  • PS2 port for either a mouse or keyboard
  • Dual HDMI and a DVI for video connections if you choose to use the onboard Intel graphic
  • full 7.1 surround sound options
  • Wireless N support with a hi-gain antenna connection
  • Dual Gigabit LAN Connections
  • Two USB 2.0 and Four USB 3.0

To all these features Gigabyte was sure to include their particular extras Bluetooth connectivity and their ultra durable design. This design makes use of a modified PCB to increase durability, heat removal and even humidity protection. It also uses solid capacitors and the power system is designed to be more efficient and work cooler. Add to this a dual BIOS to make sure your protected from bad flashes or failures and you have a motherboard built the way we have come to expect from Gigabyte.

BIOS1The bacos however come when we start using this motherboard. The first thing you will notice is that Gigabyte has designed their UEFI BIOS and it is a stunner. Do not adjust your settings this is the BIOS! The home screen as you can see offers a wealth of information including real time updates while you are making adjustments. This is an amazing improvement over the previous BIOS setup, so much so that I found myself spending double or more the time I normally spend in a BIOS just to admire it.

I could start doing screen shots, and yes it supports screen shots, of all the various screens but trust me when I say you have a wealth of app2options to choose from in tweaking this board.

Gigabyte also redid their in Windows tweaking software. This software makes it easy to see how the system is working as far as temps and voltages. It has a special section just to let you customize the various temp, fan and voltage alerts you can received, meaning you can have your system warn you when you think it should. The Fan controls software is similar to software we have seen other companies use for a few boards now but a welcome addition to Gigabyte boards. It will allow you to adjust how the CPU and System respond to temperatures in your system, meaning when you want it to be your system is all but silent.

Finally we come to the overclocking options using Smart Quickboost. you are given a number of options here. The basics for a light, medium and extreme overclock. You then get the options for the system to auto tune and advanced to allow you to manually adjust. One additional option that I have never seen before is for energy savings where it actually down clocks the chip.

For our testing we are using an Intel i7 4770K provided to us by Intel. With a Thermaltake Water 2.0 Extreme cooler hooked up I decided to see that the auto tune could do. This makes the system begin stepping through various overclock settings with stability testing being done at each step. The final settings for out setup was able to get to 5.0 GHz, that is letting the motherboard decide the settings.

goldenmicPriced at $135 on Newegg, this is the lowest cost mITX Z87 board available, and at the same time one of the best made. Packed with features, a great new BIOS design, good software package and all these with a value pricing, the Z87N is a great choice for anyone building an Intel based ITX system. We got to look at quite a few motherboards this year with our efforts at small form factor building and this board stood a head above the other closest choice to win our Golden Mic Award for 2013.

Pros

  • Good value
  • Solid feature set
  • good overclocking
  • excellent construction
  • amazing new BIOS interface
  • great software tweaking pack

Cons

  • Header placement all on one side of the board, could be hard to work with in some case designs
  • Wish they would kill the dual LAN and PS2 ports to allow for more USB

Thank you Gigabyte for allowing us a chance to test this motherboard.

Review Segment as aired the weekend of August 17th.

Download: z87n.mp3

 



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