ASUS Z87I-DELUXE Schematic Circuit Diagram || ASUS Z87I-DELUXE Motherboard Review
ASUS Z87I-DELUXE Schematic Circuit Diagram || ASUS Z87I-DELUXE Motherboard Review
Asus Z87I-DELUXE Review
Hello everybody, and welcome back to schematic-x.com. I am bringing you another Asus Z series motherboard overview this is Asus Z87I-DELUXE Motherboard. So as always what I am going to be covering here in this review is a little bit of everything from the features and the functionality of the topology of the Asus Z87I-DELUXE Motherboard. But I am also going to be covering a couple of different things and changing up how we present to you. For the motherboard review, this time around making some changes here to the layout to hopefully be able to give you the best type of details about the ASUS Z87I-DELUXE. That you are interested in from start to finish and as always I definitely would appreciate your feedback on the type of changes that I am including here and whether you like them. You'd like to see something else so make sure to keep that in mind towards the end of this review in your comments and your feedback to us. So with that, I am going to go ahead and definitely touch on the overall layout of the topology.
The feature set the functionality - I just going to do a very quick pass-through on the ASUS Z87I-DELUXE motherboard accessories. I have to detail them and then I am actually going to introduce an entirely new section that covers performance-based characteristics such as overclocking and bus-related information like serial ATA USB 3 performance and a couple of other factors rounding. At the end of this review, I am still going to give you a complete perspective on how to consider this type of motherboard in relation to you building a brand new Asus Z87I-Deluxe assembly system as well as actually rounding. Some recommendations for you guys that are interested in building a small form factor they spilled. So with that let's go ahead and jump into the ASUS Z87I-DELUXE Motherboard.
So first up you can see right here we've got the ASUS Z87I-DELUXE and so I just want to give you a little bit of context in terms of where this board sits in relation to our entire stack of Z87 series motherboards. It's a mini ATX place motherboard as opposed to a micro ATX or full-size ATX base motherboard. So it's focused on a small form-factor base motherboard. So for you that are looking to build a compact media server media center small-form-factor gaming box or just a slimline desktop that still has high performance and rich connectivity. This is where it fits the build - in relation to where it sits and maybe other small form-factor motherboards. That I am currently offering a couple of different mini ATX-based solutions with the other high-performance model being Maximus 6 impact.
If you are interested in finding out how the impact is a little bit different from this motherboard make sure to check out our Maximus 6 impact overview. Which covers that board in detail and depth. We also do have a non-overclocking-related version with a bit of cut-down features in terms of the things like Wireless and a couple other focal points on the motherboard But still is Asus quality and offers great functionality great expansion and an H series at Mini ATX port. But overall for you, we are pretty much looking for the best of the best in relation to a small form factor meaning. If you want everything installed by default, this is the board that you're going to be interested in so next up.
ASUS Z87I-DELUXE Motherboard Inspection
Let's go ahead and actually take a little bit a closer look at what comes included with ASUS Z87I-DELUXE. The ASUS Z87I-DELUXE comes included with 6 SATA cables. We have got our padded IO shield from there we've also got our user guide in our setup manual a case batch our support DVD which includes all the drivers and setup software including ASP 3. We have our Q-connector which is actually a special extensive lead and then from there lastly we have our 8 11 AC Bluetooth antenna and reception module won't go into a little bit more detail on these two right now.
Okay, so quickly touching a little bit more on to accessories that come included with unit 1 we have our actual Q connector which is an acute connector extension cable that runs to the bottom left-hand side of the motherboard. This lets us go ahead and more quickly be able to connect all our front leads such as our power button or HD LED or reset things along those lines. It makes it much easier than having to route through to this tight little block area directly on the motherboard, especially in confined areas for a mini ATX chassis. Now in addition to that, we have a really cool antenna design that we've gone ahead and redeveloped for this generation and it's actually flexible.
So you have different positions for it it also offers a magnetic base and great touches that we've gone ahead and improved the connection fittings to be SMA-based Antennas. This is great because on the ASUS Z87I-DELUXE. It means that you have the flexibility that if you don't decide you want to use this antenna you can go ahead and upgrade to a different one. Our higher amplification DBI antenna but by default, these actually offer a quite solid signal strength and reception plus. You can go ahead and adjust it for optimal reception and throughput. So make sure to keep in mind that for the best Bluetooth and 811 AC performance you do want to use this.
So now we're going to focus on the topology for the motherboard. First off we can see that we've got this vertical dotted board which is the dedicated area for our VRM section. So all our voltage regulation component trees so normally on a standard ATX base motherboard. This VRM section here in the CPU socket would usually have a lot of the MOSFETs the capacitors. The sockets that would actually be there for power delivery for our CPU. So that when we're overclocking we have a lot of power to be able to provide to that because of the small form vector area. Here on a mini ATX board, we're really kind of constrained in that but as always with the ASUS Z87I-DELUXE. Our focus is to be able to give you ATX-level performance and quality but with an ultra-small form factor design.
So you can see that's what we've accomplished here with this discrete vertical motherboard which also gives us the added benefit of giving us actually improved clearance in the CPU socket area. So that we can use larger low profile CPU cooling solutions but not only do we get high-performance VRM but we also have additional clearance now this is a 12-phase VRM design 12 plus meaning that we have 12 phases for the CPU. As well as than 2 for the DRAM, overall we have very very high-end power output capability meaning that we can overclock this without any issues. When it comes to stability and reliability, of course, we continue to utilize high-performance MOSFETs and drivers and 5k-rated capacitors twice. The industry standard is the DIGI+ power design that we have here powering the entire CPU both at idle and overclocked configurations.
Let's go ahead and focus on the top of the motherboard layout. You can see right here from the top we've got four fan headers that are a big upgrade from the previous generation. Which only offered two and didn't fully support our fan expert in technology. In this generation, every single one of these headers supports both three-pin and four-pin control both within the UEFI as well as under AI suite 3vf Anne. So a really big upgrade gives you the best-in-class controls you can get especially on a mini ATX base motherboard that's really nice for those larger-size enclosures that give you more fan room.
Now right there on the left-hand side, we've got the DIGI+VRM power solution that we talked about here with the vertical RAM slots. Now one note that I do want to touch on between the CPU socket and PCI Express slot. You can see that we have a huge amount of space between the CPU socket as well as the PCI Express slot. I will discuss more in the other post.
