Asus Z87-PRO Motherboard Schematic Circuit Diagram or BoardView || Asus Z87-PRO Motherboard Review
Asus Z87-PRO Motherboard Schematic Circuit Diagram or BoardView || Asus Z87-PRO Motherboard Review
Asus Z87-PRO Motherboard Review
Hello everybody, and welcome back to www.schematic-x.com. We're bringing you another overview of the Asus Z87 series motherboard specifically. We are going to be talking about the Asus Z87-PRO. So this is a motherboard that we have right in our mid-range series. It has a great set of features from functionality and an outstanding level of performance. Like always, we're going to cover some of the features, the function, the design topology connectivity, and what comes inside the box, and then we're going to go ahead and wrap things up for you.
Give a bit of perspective on where you're going to be considering the PRO if you're building a brand new Asus Z87-based system. So first and foremost, let's first go ahead and take a look at the accessories that come included with the motherboard. We have gone ahead and cracked open the box. We're going to take a look and see what comes included here. So we have two sets of serial ATA 6 cables that are 2 in each pack. So a total of four, we have our q connectors, so these are quick and easy leads that you can go ahead and connect to the bottom side of the board for USB and your front chassis leads like a power reset power led things like that.
We've got a slim ribbon cable for you interested in running multi GPU and configurations, wireless and BlueTooth antenna for our integrated 8211 ac dual-band antenna, and the IO shield. Make sure and install this before you put it in the motherboard. Make sure and install the AI speed 3 to take advantage of all our essential functions and features for the motherboard. Then, of course, we have our support DVD, which contains all the drivers and our AI suite three software.
We've got a complete feature setup guide or manual on our four-way optimization technology wi-fi go and many of the unique features and functions we have on the motherboard. So make sure to check this out, and lastly, we have our general user guide, so this is the specifications, the features, and installation aspects, as well as troubleshooting tips for your board, and that wraps up what we have with for the Z87 series pro.
Now the cool thing is the top of the motherboard header. It also features a special depression switch which is built inside. Once you go ahead and plug your fan in, it will allow it to detect whether It's a 4-pin or 4-bin-based fan automatically. That's another exclusive feature on our ASUS series of Z87 motherboards. The motherboard fully supports DDR3 dual-channel memory, and we've validated it up to 2800 speeds. Next to that, we have a great feature that we call our MemoOk button. The Memo Ok button will be a one-stop shop with a button to press, allowing you to resolve memory compatibility issues sometimes. If you overclock the board too hard, you might lock it up, and instead of clearing the CMOS, You can depress that button, and it will just reset your frequency-based parameters instead of removing all your settings.
Let's say your fan controls, SATA operation modes, or things along those lines. Now there's also going to be an led that's right above that you'll see DRAM-led, which works in conjunction with our Q-Led technology. There are four of these LEDs sprinkled throughout the motherboard. One for the DRAM, another one in the CPU section. Another one for the graphics section and the one for the boot device. These LEDs will light up and let you know if there's an initialization problem when setting up your system with one of those corresponding points. It's easier to work with than dealing with the debug code that we'll touch on once.
We get down to that section of the board, moving down from there. Of course, you'll see a lot of capacitors, just like all the capacitors we have in the VRM section. These capacitors are rated at 5k operation versus the industry standard of 2K. So significantly higher threshold in terms of the total life span of another chassis 4-pin 24-pin power connection. We have a front USB 3 that supports our USB 3 boost technology for improving performance for storage devices and Another 4-pin chassis fan header with eight serial ATA status 6g ports. These 6 SATA right of the RAM slots are provided by the PCH directly, and then we have two that are provided by the as media 1061 SATA 6g controller.
Now right below from 6 SATA ports or at the end of the motherboard's bottom-right, we've got some great options in terms of performance-oriented and power-saving related features. One is our EPU switch which, if you flip into the other direction, will automatically allow you to optimize the system in terms of reduced power consumption and lower voltage supplied to the CPU. Still, without affecting performance, This is a great way to maximize the overall lifespan and efficiency of your system but not compromise on the performance if you're interested in overclocking or performance.
Please look at the TPU switch and flip it in the other direction. If you're using better than reference cooling, you can end up with about a 4.25 gigahertz overclock with the flip of a switch. So that's a unique hardware-oriented mechanism free of adjustments in the UEFI or the software. Now from there, you're also going to have, of course. All your front chassis leads things like your power button, your reset button, the hard drive showed stuff like that, and right above that, you're going to have a very cool header; this is a DRCT header now this works in conjunction with a button we have over here called the direct key button.
If you want to be able to access your UEFI easily, what you can do is if your system's outside of the chassis or you quickly have it available to you in terms of you cracked open your chassis and taking a look. If you press the direct key button, it's a one-stop-shop and can reboot directly into the UEFI no delete key note F1 key. If you have it inside the chassis, you can run your reset lead instead of running it to the chassis header to this DRCT header, and that button will automatically become the direct key. You can always reboot directly into your UEFI with the touch of a button. The same thing is fully controllable in the UEFI software. We've got another 4-pin chassis fan header, like all the other headers, and some USB2 ports. Then have our USB BIOS flashback button, which works with the USB flashback port on the motherboard; this is an excellent way of directly updating the actual UEFI chip without any CPU or memory graphics card.
All you need is the power supplied to the motherboard. We can directly update the UEFI with the touch of a button. Just taking your flash drive and plugging it in with the corresponding file, and you're good to go; this is also a great option if maybe you get a surge spike or sag that corrupts this chip, and the system won't post, saving you from having to RMA or send your board in for service. Now keep in mind that even that would be rare because these are removable socketed chips, unlike competitors, which use cheaper solutions.
We have an onboard power button, and then we've got our HD audio connection which ties into our brand new ALC 1150 HD Audio Codec, an update from the previous generation that fully supports DTS Ultra to PC and DTS connect. We'll touch a little more on that when we look at the back IO from the motherboard for you interested in advanced security management. We have a TPM header and then move right up to the back IO of the motherboard right next to our top buy one PCIe slot. We have one more chassis fan header that rounds out all the connectivity we have here on the board next up. We've got a section that a lot of you guys are always interested in that will be the actual power delivery or the VRM. Intel has incorporated a digital controller inside the CPU package for this generation. But that does not mean we still don't have to provide power componentry to give power to the CPU, ensure stability, reliability, and performance, and enhance overclock ability.
So we continue to use our DIGI+ VRM design which means we have digital controllers that are interfacing with the memory and being able to externally bring in control from your EPU to the CPU package. Along with that, we've got all the high-end components you'd expect. We continue to use the 5k rated capacitors. We have high-performance alloy fully moulded inductors. The great thing about these is that they're not hollow graphics; they're made of a unique alloy-based process that allows us to have a higher level of amperage output and ensure better overall performance and thermal efficiency.
We have high-performance MOSFETs that you can't see, which are underneath these VRM heatsinks. The heatsinks helped us provide overall high-performance, high quality in terms of the thermal dissipation capabilities through the management options that we have in the UEFI and the software. You're going to get excellent reliability, stability, and overclock ability. We've had no issues regarding whether it's 4.6, 4.7, and 4.8 gigahertz or more significant on this board so that you can feel confident in its overclocking potential. In addition, this stuff will work to help to aid in our four-way optimization. Look at the PCI connectivity; you can see it's pretty robust from the top of the motherboard. We've got a by-one PCIe slot. We have a physical and electrical by 16 places. These are mapped from the CPU, meaning that this will be 16 gen 3. Then have another by one, and then we have a color change, and this is physical by 16 slots, but if you're going to be running crossfire configurations, these would switch in being by 8 and then by 8.
Next, we have another by one, and lastly, we have another physical by 16. We have a limitation on the PCI lanes running one by one and depending on your configuration inside the UEFI. One last thing that is running AMD-based configurations, and AMD does allow for a third GPU to be run by four configurations. Keep that in mind, so next up, let's look at our back IO connectivity.
Let's take a look at the back IO. We've got a combo PS2 port, so that's good for a keyboard and mouse for you who like the old-school connectivity. We've got four USB 3 ports that fully support our USB 3 boost technology, optimize storage performance and support our USB charger plus technology, allowing you to quick charge devices like android windows, and iOS-based devices. If you're in sleep hibernation or your system is off, we have our new, improved Wifi go module built on board. This feature gives you an 11n dual-band, so 2.4 and 5 gigahertz and connectivity along with Bluetooth 4.0, and we've even updated the actual connectors to total SMA-based antennas.
We have 4 options VGA DVI Displayport and HDMI with display port, of course, and HDMI supporting higher than 1080p resolutions, even up to 4k. If you are lucky enough to get a 4k monitor and, of course, supporting 3d technologies and these can, of course, be driven directly by the GPU built onto the CPU. We have a Toslink optical output that works with that ALC 1150 audio chip. We can hardware re-encode any two-channel source into either 5.1 or 7.1 on audio. We've got two more USB 3 ports to support the same USB 3 boost and USB charger. We have a new Intel i-series network controller, which supports our network eye control technology. It allows you to optimize your network-centric services such as downloading web browsing, gaming, or any number of things through a simple application that we have in AI Suite 3.
You see, this motherboard has a little bit of everything while maintaining all the design points you're interested in having in a high-quality, high-performance motherboard.
