Z77 mITX Round-Up: Five of the Best – MSI, Zotac, ASRock, EVGA and ASUS
by Ian Cutress on December 31, 2012 7:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- MSI
- ASRock
- EVGA
- ZOTAC
- Asus
- Ivy Bridge
- Z77
- mITX
EVGA Z77 Stinger BIOS
Now that 2012 is almost over, it has been a full two years since the initial implementation of graphical BIOS systems, and the paradigm shift towards interactivity and engagement in the BIOS. It has been a keen topic of mine to discuss with the manufacturers about the true nature of how interactive a BIOS should be, how it should engage the user, and how there are a million and one (hyperbole not withstanding) ways in order to improve the current generation of BIOSes.
Implementing these graphical BIOS systems is easy for the bigger motherboard manufacturers – ASUS, MSI and ASRock were all on the bandwagon from Day One. Gigabyte took a little longer with their different implementation, but even Biostar, ECS, Zotac and Intel managed to skin something up to make the BIOS more appealing in terms of menu options and aesthetics. For EVGA, this is a task they still have to do.
While we have not got the white text on blue that marked out BIOSes pre-2011, the white on black with little EVGA icons for different sections is not really a step forward. I apologize in advance for the quality of the following images – EVGA does not have a screenshot button in their BIOS, and even when taking pictures with my DSLR, white text on a black background without a tripod is a tough task.
The main Overview screen actually does a lot of what I like when I first go into a BIOS – we get the name of the motherboard (in this case, Z77 Stinger = E692), the BIOS version, the processor installed, speed of the processor, the memory installed, the speed of the memory, some voltages and temperatures. If EVGA were to hire another BIOS engineer or two to wrap this up into a design, it could be a winner.
In the ‘Advanced’ menu is where the normal onboard device configuration, SATA configuration and hardware monitor options hang out:
Thankfully EVGA resort to enabling AHCI by default on the SATA configuration. The more important menus in the Advanced section is the H/W Monitor, which holds the fan speed controls. As there is no fan speed control in the OS, all control comes through the BIOS. Opening the H/W Monitor menu gives the following:
The Temperature Monitor and Voltage Monitor screens give pure information, whereas the Fan Speed Monitor allows the user to adjust the fan settings.
For the three fan headers on board we have two different styles of options. The main CPU header gets a full multi-point gradient in its design – users can specify the amount of power to the fan header as a function of temperature over several points. The downside of this is the assumption that fan speed is a linear function of power, which is not always the case – at <5% power any particular fan will do one of two things: (i) not start up, or (ii) run at a minimum RPM. This is why certain controls on other boards do a pre-test to find how a fan reacts as a function of applied voltage. The other two fan headers are offered at configurable duty speeds.
For overclocking, we head to the overclocking menu. This menu is very similar to previous EVGA boards we have tested in the past:
On the main Overclocking screen we have multiplier control, VDroop control, options for OCP and performance tweaks as well as voltage options. The OC Mode is a fun setting to have on a motherboard, as it automatically disables all the additional ports not used in extreme overclocking, like audio, NIC and so on.
The memory configuration screen allows users to adjust the multiplier and subtimings on their memory. Despite having an option to enable an XMP profile, none of my memory kits I use in testing would work – no option was offered to enable XMP. As a result I had to go in and manually adjust timings. But as there are so many timings to change and only extreme enthusiasts would know exactly what every setting would be on their memory.
The CPU settings deal with additional options such as Turbo modes, CPU power limits, Hyperthreading and cores used, whereas the BCLK menu gives the user BCLK control. There is an issue with the BCLK menu however – when adjusted (in either the OS or the BIOS), this setting is not changed back to 100 MHz when the Optimized Default option is chosen. This is rather a large oversight, as when recovering from a bad overclock, you ideally do not want the board still booting at 105 MHz or something the processor cannot handle.
Elsewhere in the BIOS are options to adjust the boot order, security, and a handy Boot Override feature to allow a one-time boot from a detected device – a useful tool for installing OSes or testing software.
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mike_b - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
Interesting article, but I have to ask why would someone spend more for a Z77 chipset when using 'just' an i3? Surely a much cheaper H61 chipset could do the job admirably, and at much lower cost.Z77 makes sense if you're overclocking, which is excluded from this test...
IanCutress - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
H61 has no chipset USB 3.0, no chipset SATA 6 Gbps, and you are limited to PCIe 2.0. H61 is also technically limited to one single sided DIMM per channel, and no SATA RAID. There's also SRT to consider, that would be advantageous with the ASRock and the mSATA on the rear.Ian
mike_b - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
It might make an interesting comparison to see what net advantage is gained with the added features of the Z77 chipset compared with the H61. If budgets are limited the ~100 dollar cost difference between the Z77 and H61 mainboards makes a big difference; that money saved could be put into something which makes more of a performance difference (SSD rather than HDD for example).Anandtech is one of the best tech sites around, you guys do a great job. I do sometimes see though an emphasis on more expensive products when in terms of real-world performance you could get almost the same thing at a much cheaper price. Might be worth mentioning somewhere.
Not least because with yet another new socket coming with Haswell all these 1155 boards will be seen as out of date soon anyway.
IanCutress - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
Once we get into the swing with Haswell, we will hopefully covering the whole spectrum. Though it is worth noting that motherboard manufacturers, want to put their best foot forward, and would prefer their halo/channel boards get covered before their OEM / low end offerings. Hence this is why you rarely see many mainstream reviews that are not from forums dedicated to the market segment and users testing their own equipment. We are hoping to rectify the balance in due course. If there are any specific products you might want us to test or examine, drop me an email and I'll see what I can put in my schedule (as full as it is[!]) :)Ian
StormyParis - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
This is a major issue, not limited to motherboards: whenever I'm looking for something middle of the road or outright cheap, I can't find reviews.These Z77 MBs are a nice example: even though I'm recommending/building PCs regularly, most of them mini-ITX, I never came across a use case for Z77. Nobody apart from teens that still have something to prove overclocks anymore. People who want to do multi-GPU get a big case, and a big board. Are we supposed the extrapolate that the makers of good Z77 boards also make good H77 and H61 boards ?
I understand you've got to make do with what you're given by the OEMs. And that reviews was very good, as usual. Pity it is irrelevant ?
Tech-Curious - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
That's an interesting observation. I have to say, I never noticed a significant lack of coverage for low-to-mid-range components (either in general or on Anandtech in particular), until this Fall, when I was in the market for a lower end motherboard.I guess I just always gravitated to higher end mobos before. Or maybe the coverage for such products was more comprehensive years ago. My memory's foggy, so it's hard to say.
In any case, motherboards appear to be the exception. If anything, I think the internet has generally grown more bullish on low-to-mid-range CPUs and GPUs in recent years (probably, in part, as a result of the stagnating console situation, which results in stagnating system requirements for games).
But all of that rambling aside, yeah. It'd be nice to see more diverse motherboard analysis. When I bought a b75 a couple of months ago, I literally couldn't find a review for that chipset. It wasn't a big deal; it's not like b75's features are any great mystery, after all -- but it is a little nettlesome to trip over sixty bajillion z77 reviews when there's nary peep about any other chipset.
In other news, Ian's review is a good one -- and given that I've been a faithful user of Asus motherboards for the last 15 years, it's nice to see them take home the prize. :)
Etern205 - Saturday, January 5, 2013 - link
My guess would be, why review a cheap board when majority of the readers here won't even bother buying it?And as for Asus boards, I've heard, they do something called based-line features. This means all boards from the bottom of the range to the top (Intel B75-Z77) will have the same base-line features, other features are just added like BT, WiFi, extra lan, etc.
Tech-Curious - Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - link
Yes, I think the issue is that (at least with respect to Intel chipsets) low-end motherboards don't support overclocking. So they're both less interesting to review (fewer measurable differences in performance among different models), and they're less appealing to the presumed audience of sites like Anandtech.Still, the B75 is a perfectly good chipset. If you aren't heavily invested in overclocking, z77's advantages are likely wasted on you. Personally, I'm well beyond my overclocking days; I just don't have the time or the patience to go through the almost endless tuning process anymore. (Even if you find a stable OC at the outset, it can become unstable later, and/or a given application might expose instability that stress testing didn't, weeks or even months down the road).
jonjonjonj - Friday, January 4, 2013 - link
just cause you don't overclock doesn't mean other people don't. why wouldn't you? because you want to get the fastest cpu that you can afford means you have something to prove? some people are just idiots.Zap - Monday, December 31, 2012 - link
But there isn't a $100 difference between H61 and Z77. There is a cheaper Gigabyte Z77 ITX board that's only around $60 more than the cheapest H61 ITX board, and it was even on sale recently for another $13 off making it less than $50 difference.Alternately one can go the H77 ITX route and get all the Z77 goodies except for overclocking, for around $30 less than the cheapest Z77 ITX. I think $30 more than H61 is reasonable for those extra features, plus guaranteed out-of-the-box BIOS support for Ivy Bridge.
I do agree with your (mike_b) first post regarding the choice of CPU used. Ian Cutress, didn't you have a spare K CPU laying around? There are so many people building overclocked ITX rigs these days. I did in a Silverstone SG05 with low profile air cooler to hit 4.2GHz. Plenty of others use the Bitfenix Prodigy and liquid cooling to hit clocks normally reserved for ATX rigs. Another review site (Tweaktown) tested overclocking on Z77 ITX boards and the ASRock hit near 4.8GHz. THAT'S what I want to see.
Of course this AnandTech roundup has some very useful information too, such as DPC latency tests and POST times. Keep up the good work there! But please, know your audience. Next time if the board is supposed to be overclockable, test that feature.
Maybe there can be a companion article about overclocking and heatsink clearance? Would be a shame to not overclock this nice collection of Z77 ITX boards.