Z97 Mini-ITX Overview
Mini-ITX builds are typically not the center for overclocking, although they should be designed to house the most powerful processors. Two memory slots limits the memory capacity to 16 GB, which for VM use limits anything other than a simple virtualization environment with a handful of instances. The PCIe 3.0 x16 slot is usually a big plus, allowing gamers to equip the best single GPU card into a small system, or for home NAS builds to implement a RAID card, or for TV Tuner/HTPC applications.
Intel says that the 9 Series chipsets will also support its upcoming 5th-Generation Core processors, code-named "Broadwell," whenever they arrive for the desktop. (Late 2014 appears to be the earliest that's likely to happen.) So, if you’re building a new Windows PC now, before Broadwell, you can buy a Z97 board with some confidence that you’ll be able to upgrade, down the road, from a 4th-Generation processor to a 5th-Generation one. The Broadwell chips should use the same LGA 1150 CPU socket as Intel's 4th-Generation Core processors.
| ASUS H97I-PLUS | ASUS Z97I-PLUS | MSI Z97I Gaming AC | |
| Price | ~$110 | ~$160 | ~$190 |
| Expansion | 1x PCIe 3.0 x16 1x mini-PCIe | 1x PCIe 3.0 x16 | 1x PCIe 3.0 x16 |
| Multi-GPU | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| SATA | 4x 6Gbps (Intel) 1x M.2 Socket 3 | 4x 6Gbps (Intel) 1x M.2 Socket 3 | 4x 6Gbps (Intel) 2x eSATA 6Gbps |
| USB | External: 4x 3.0 (Intel) 4x 2.0 (Intel) Internal: 2x 3.0 (Intel) | External: 4x 3.0 (Intel) 4x 2.0 (Intel) Internal: 2x 3.0 (Intel) 2x 2.0 (Intel) | External: 4x 3.0 (Intel) 4x 2.0 (Intel) Internal: 2x 3.0 (Intel) 2x 2.0 (Intel) |
| Thunderbolt | None | None | None |
| Network | 1x Intel (I218V) | 1x Intel (I218V) 802.11ac Wireless | 1x Killer Ethernet (E2200) 802.11ac Wireless |
| Bluetooth | None | 4.0 | 4.0 |
| Audio | Realtek ALC887 | Realtek ALC892 | Realtek ALC1150 |
| Power | 6 Power Phase Digital VRM 5K Solid Caps 3x 4-pin Fan Headers | 6+2 Power Phase Digital VRM 5K Solid Caps 3x 4-pin Fan Headers | 6 Power Phase 2x 4-pin Fan Headers |
| Back Ports | 4x USB 3.0 4x USB 2.0 1x LAN 1x Optical S/PDIF 1x HDMI 1x DisplayPort 1x VGA 1x DVI 3x Audio Jacks 1x PS/2 KB+Mouse | 4x USB 3.0 4x USB 2.0 1x LAN 1x Bluetooth Transmittor 1x Optical S/PDIF 1x HDMI 1x DisplayPort 1x VGA 1x DVI 3x Audio Jacks Wi-Fi Connector 1x PS/2 KB+Mouse | 4x USB 3.0 4x USB 2.0 1x LAN 1x Bluetooth Transmittor 1x Optical S/PDIF 2x HDMI 1x DisplayPort 6x Audio Jacks Wi-Fi Connector 1x PS/2 KB+Mouse CMOS Clear Button |
Introduction of the ASUS Z97I PLUS
The Asus Z97I-Plus certainly delivers a hefty dose of features for a motherboard that’s just 6.7 inches square. In fact, it's so cheap that it currently undercuts its predecessor, the Z87I-Pro by around £10. The new offering adds 802.11ac WiFi to the equation and while you might not have spotted an M.2 port, it does exist and is mounted on the rear of the PCB instead. The board loses the large VRM daughterboard that was present on the Z77 and Z87 variants and the Maximus VI Impact.
Specs and Delivery
| Chipset | Intel Z97 |
| Memory | Dual Channel DDR3, 4 x DIMM, Max. 32 GB DDR3, 3200(O.C.) / 3100(O.C.) / 3000(O.C.) / 2933(O.C.) / 2800(O.C.) / 2666(O.C.) / 2600(O.C.) / 2500(O.C.) / 2400(O.C.) / 2200(O.C.) / 2133(O.C.) / 2000(O.C.) / 1866(O.C.) / 1800(O.C.) / 1600 / 1333 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory |
| Multi-GPU |
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| Slots |
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| Sound | Realtek ALC892 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC
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| Storage | Intel Z97 chipset
|
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth V4.0 |
| Network |
|
| Internal Connectors |
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| Extrenal Connectors |
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| Forfactor | Mini ITX Form Factor (17cm x 17cm) |
| BIOS | Bios (64 Mb flash ROM, UEFI AMI BIOS) |
Features
ASUS 5X Protection | In this case the ASUS marketing department has been thinking about a new name for a set of features. "5X Protection" is the word they associate with the following things. First of all there is a six phase Digi+ power design, which is built around an ASP1103 chip. Second, you get ASUS DRAM OCP, which provides short circuit protection. Other than that there is the so called ESD guard that features additional protection regarding electrostatic discharge. Last but not least we find capacitors, which have been rated for 5000 hours. Overall this sounds like a reasonable featureset for a high-end Mini-ITX motherboard. |  |
ASUS Fan Xpert 3 | ASUS Fan Xpert 3 provides customizable settings for fans that have been attached directly to the onboard fan headers. With the Fan Auto Tuning feature, ASUS Fan Xpert 3 automatically detects and tweaks all fan speeds and in the end reduces unwanted noise. |  |
M.2 Support | The new Z97 ITX motherboard from ASUS features an M.2 slot moved to the back part of the board this board can be euqipped with SSDs in M.2 format. M.2 is wired directly to the Z97 PCH via two PCI Express lanes, therefore offering x2 bandwidth. In other words up to 10 Gbps can be pushed over the bus through this slot, almost doubling performance of SATA-III. |  |
ASUS WiFi GO | ASUS equips this board with a WiFi adaptor. In this case it's a modern dual-band adaptor which supports WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac. |  |
| EPU | EPU automatically detects the current system load and moderates power usage. It offers a system-wide energy optimization and is able to reduce fan noise. |  |
Z97I-Plus has only one expansion slot, a PCI Express x16 slot that can handle any graphics card, provided there’s room for it in your PC's case...
Four SATA III ports adequate for Mini-ITX
It’s the intended replacement for the tiny mSATA SSDs we’ve seen in plenty of ultrabooks, as well as Intel’s NUC platform and Gigabyte’s NUC-derivative Brix PCs. (A few desktop motherboards have supported mSATA with dedicated slots, as well.)
Here’s a look at an M.2 slot, highlighted in yellow...
M.2 drives have previously been used in Apple’s late-model MacBooks and Sony’s VAIO Pro line. But Z97 on the desktop looks to take these drives to a wider audience of gamers and enthusiasts, who will no doubt appreciate that M.2 drives are tiny, as well as much faster than standard SATA SSDs.
In a desktop PC environment, the M.2 size benefit is of somewhat minor importance; after all, it's just as easy to cram as many 2.5-inch SSDs as you can afford into most PC cases. It's the speed that makes the difference. M.2 drives can be faster than standard SATA drives because they borrow bandwidth from the much faster PCI Express lanes, which are normally used for graphics and other expansion cards. Intel says M.2 drives on the Z97 chipset will top out at PCI Express x2, or 1GB per second. As more of these drives proliferate into the market (we haven't had the opportunity to test one yet), having a slot for one will be more and more a plus.
As a result, if you want to add an M.2 SSD after your initial build, you’ll have to completely remove the motherboard from the case. If you’ve installed the motherboard inside a small-form-factor (SFF) enclosure, that very well might mean you’ll have to remove the power supply and some other components, too, to get access to the board. (SFF PC builds tend to be complicated that way.)
A half-height Mini-PCI slot on the opposite side of the board, behind the I/O plate, houses a chip that provides both 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0...
The inclusion of the latest Wi-Fi spec is a major plus here, especially in a board with so few slots. (On Mini-ITX, the integrated features matter that much more.) Also, on the left side of the CPU socket, the board houses three four-pin fan connectors, above a TPM header...
Moving on to the I/O-port area at back, the Asus Z97I-Plus is well-equipped here, as well, with a surprising four video connectors: VGA, DVI-D, HDMI, and DisplayPort, all of them full-size...
You can use these four ports to power up to three displays at once. Also back here, you'll find a whopping eight USB ports: four blue USB 3.0, the rest black USB 2.0. A PS/2 port for legacy input devices camps out back here, too, as well as a Gigabit Ethernet jack and mounts for the included Wi-Fi antennas.
The audio connectivity is a little bit limited, with only three analog jacks (mic, line in, and line out), but an optical S/PDIF port will satisfy audiophiles. We suspect fewer and fewer gamers and enthusiasts are hooking up their PCs to surround-sound systems these days, at least not with the usual six-port array of analog jacks.
The board does have some audio-specific features, though, including a dedicated audio amplifier, dedicated PCB layers to handle audio, a “de-pop” circuit to reduce loud popping at system startup (which could save your speakers), and the oft-lauded Japanese capacitors to handle audio duties. The onboard audio is handled by Realtek’s ALC892 8-channel audio CODEC.
| Intel LGA1150 Test System | |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-4770K – Quad-Core, 3.50GHz |
| Motherboard | ASUS Z97I-PLUS (BIOS: ’2103′ 07/03/2014) MSI Z97I Gaming AC (BIOS: ’1.2′ 06/30/2014) |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX Beast 2x8GB – DDR3-2133 11-12-11-31 |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti (GeForce 334.98 Driver) |
| Audio | Onboard |
| Storage | Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD |
| Power Supply | Corsair HX850W |
| Chassis | Corsair Obsidian 700D Full-Tower |
| Cooling | Noctua NH-U14S Air Cooler |
| Et cetera | Windows 7 Professional 64-bit |
Increasing the BCLK value is one way that vendors could sneak in some higher-than-stock performance numbers, so after letting the test bench sit idle for a couple of minutes, we look at the current BCLK value as according to CPU-Z.
| BCLK Values | Result |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 99.8 MHz |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 100.0 MHz |
General System Performance
To take a look at the “overall” performance of our PC configuration, we rely on dual Futuremark suites: PCMark 8 and 3DMark (2013).
| PCMark 8 Suite Scores | Home | Work | Creative |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 4346 | 5255 | 3478 |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 4214 | 5123 | 3343 |
| Higher results are better. | |||
| 3DMark (2013) | 3DMark | Graphics | Physics |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 3286 | 3464 | 11116 |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 3273 | 3458 | 10604 |
| Fire Strike test. 3DMark results in points; higher is better. | |||
Both boards perform well here, with ASUS getting the slight edge that we expected it would.
I/O Performance
To properly give the internal SATA 6Gbps a good workout, we turn to HD Tune and CrystalDiskMark.
| HD Tune Pro 5 | Minimum | Average | Maximum | Latency |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 309.6 | 422.5 | 460.6 | 0.056ms |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 305.3 | 418.6 | 455.2 | 0.055ms |
| Min/Avg/Max results in MB/s; higher is better. Latency results in ms; lower is better. | ||||
| CrystalDiskMark | Read Seq. | Read 4K | Write Seq. | Write 4K |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 523.1 | 41.87 | 317.8 | 161.1 |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 494.5 | 40.83 | 309.8 | 153.4 |
| All results in MB/s. | ||||
| CrystalDiskMark USB 3.0 | Read Seq. | Read 4K | Write Seq. | Write 4K |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 273.5 | 29.20 | 271.2 | 70.72 |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 270.6 | 28.65 | 262.9 | 67.45 |
| All results in MB/s. | ||||
I mentioned at the top of the page that with stock clocks, one board should perform like another. One exception to that rule though is I/O; component choices and general board design can make a sizable difference. It’s interesting, then, that despite a boosted CPU clock being unable to improve performance here, ASUS’ board still comes out on top here. The differences are minor, of course, but it’s still interesting to note.
Rendering & Image Manipulation
Writing files to disk or reading a website doesn’t do much to exercise our CPU, so for that, we turn to a few common scenarios – image editing, video rendering, music conversion, and 3D rendering.
| Adobe Lightroom 5.5 | Result |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 589 s |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 636 s |
| Results in seconds; lower is better. | |
| Autodesk 3ds Max 2015 | Result |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 895 s |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 981 s |
| Results in seconds; lower is better. | |
| Cinebench R15 | OpenGL | CPU |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 132.63 | 800 |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 119.54 | 759 |
| Higher results are better. | ||
| dBpoweramp R15 | FLAC to MP3 |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 829 s |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 874 s |
| 500 FLAC to 320Kbps MP3. | |
| HandBrake 0.99 | Result |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 2187 s |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 2319 s |
| Results in seconds; lower is better. | |
The free performance boost the ASUS board gives us shines through in these results. It should be noted that even for an inexperienced user, achieving similar boosts on the MSI board would not be difficult. It’s just that ASUS removes the need to pursue that boost (whether or not that’s a good thing is dependent on your perspective).
Sub-system Performance
For memory and CPU testing, we utilize SiSoftware’s Sandra 2014 (SP2).
| Sandra 2014 SP2 (Memory) | Integer | Float |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 27.472 GB/s | 27.607 GB/s |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 21.604 GB/s * | 21.673 GB/s * |
| Int/Float/Cache results in GB/s; higher is better. * MSI board tested with DDR3-1866 (vs. 2133) sticks due to space limitations. | ||
| Sandra 2014 SP2 (Arithmetic) | Dhrystone | Whetstone |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 157.16 GIPS | 86.22 GFLOPS |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 148.79 GIPS | 83.01 GFLOPS |
| Higher is better. | ||
| Sandra 2014 SP2 (Multi-core) | Bandwidth | Latency |
| ASUS Z97I-PLUS | 31.568 GB/s | 36.5 ns |
| MSI Z97I Gaming AC | 28.340 GB/s | 36.9 ns |
| Bandwidth results; higher is better. Latency results; lower is better. | ||
