ASUS Z87 WS Motherboard Review
Overview
Hardware: CPU & MotherboardsWHAT WE LIKED:
Feature and Performance Packed, Intuitive Software package, and Overclocking StableWHAT WE DISLIKED:
Color Choice, but can be subjective.
Introduction
In the world of custom PC Building, consumers and builders frequently ask what the best motherboards are for Gaming PC Builds. While these are always valid questions, some folks are looking to build a high end rendering or workstation PC. The Z87 series chipset has plenty of options from the budget friendly models to enthusiast gaming motherboards; however, workstation motherboards are not as readily available.
That changes today. We are going to be looking at a motherboard from ASUS, one of the few manufacturers who created a Z87 chipset based WS (workstation) motherboard to meet this niche market. We have the ASUS Z87 WS on our test bench, and we are going to put this baby to through the ringer.
As an interesting aside, one of the few features of this motherboard which immediately caught our attention is the available support of Quad SLI and Crossfire with 4 PCIe slots available. Not many Z87 motherboards offer this out of the box. There are also tons of other features that we typically don’t see with your “typical” Z87 chipset motherboard. Does this bode well for this unique new board? Read on to find out!
Let’s get the review started by talking about the 8 Series chipset, but first here’s a quick word about Asus:
Origin of the Name “Asus”
ASUS comes from the last four letters of Pegasus, the winged horse in Greek mythology that represents the inspiration of art and learning. ASUS embodies the strength, creative spirit and purity symbolized by this regal and agile mythical creature, soaring to new heights of quality and innovation with each product it introduces to the market.
I put together my latest build using this MB with a Core i7 4770K and two GTX 780 GPU’s.
I haven’t used many of the features of the MB yet, but it does run rock-stable out of the box. I could just about do anything with this rig; from content creation, rendering, gaming, mining…you name it.