*** ASUS Sabertooth Z77 official thread - info, BIOS, preview, review etc.***

[FlanK3r]

Srry for video quality...

UNBOXING PREVIEW




BASIC INFO:

LGA1155 Intel® 3rd/2nd Generation Processors Ready
TUF Thermal Armor - Total Airflow-Boosting Heat Dissipation
TUF Dust Defender-Repel the Dust, Expand the Lifespan
TUF Thermal Radar - Real Time Temp. Detection and Heat Removal
TUF Components [Choke, Cap. & MOSFET; Certified by Military-standard] - Certified for Tough Duty
New DIGI+ Power Control - All-New Digital Power Control for both CPU and DRAM

OVERVIEW:
http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Int...ABERTOOTH_Z77/

[Leeghoofd]

go go Christian show us what this board is made off ! My Asus rep promised me one over month ago, still haven't got it :p Samples are so badly arranged in the benelux... Where's Gary when you need him :p

[FlanK3r]

lol, Im not Christian (or it was popular joke last days :-D ). He is "only" my friend. FlanK3r= real Michal I can show u some photos of motherboard ,-)

[Halk]

Cheers, gives us a chance to Czech it out. Is the TUF thing all hype, or do you think it really is more likely to be durable/stable/solid?

[l0ud_sil3nc3]

go go Christian show us what this board is made off ! My Asus rep promised me one over month ago, still haven't got it :p Samples are so badly arranged in the benelux... Where's Gary when you need him :p

lol, Christian Ney = Flank3r

I am looking forward to the Z77 Sabertooth as I just recently built a P67 Sabertooth and felt it was a pretty full featured board especially given the price point, but pass on the tuff armor

[Tacops]

Why no HD video?

[FlanK3r]

because my "" camera

Halk: I think, this board its ok for very long PC running. You have 5 years warranty. And new interesting features for fan control.

[Halk]

New interesting features for fan control appeals That's something I can't seem to find a solution to. Financially I can't afford to buy all the latest stuff all the time, so I'm justifying this upgrade to Ivy Bridge on electricity prices. My current setup doesn't seem to like to go into S1 sleep, only S3, so I'll save £100 in electricty a year (and I don't want to repeat the calculations in case I'm wrong! :p )

Interesting to see if the tiny wee motherboard fans that come with it are silent, and if they have automatic fan controls.

[stasio]

SABERTOOTH-Z77-ASUS-0906
ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/mb/LG...-ASUS-0906.zip

[jackbrennan2008]

I've just placed an order for one which should arrive on Tuesday of next week. It will be interesting to see how it goes! I'm slightly worried about the fans though. I've only had bad experiences with tiny fans on motherboards - Squellling!!!

At least they are optional.

[Halk]

I think we can all remember the little screamers that used to come on top of the SB years ago. I did get a couple of 40mm fans and glued them onto an Adaptec RAID card, entirely inaudible at 12v.... so hopefully Asus haven't been daft with the fans.

I did pick up a wee bit more information on the fan controls from Hardware Canucks. Have a look here and it's got a bit of info about the Fan Xpert. It is one of my pet hates with Asus though. The update the Fan Xpert software for new boards only, existing boards get stuck with the old software, despite there being no hardware limitation on it. My Crosshair IV Forumula Fan Xpert isn't quite as good as it could be, but they've not touched it since launch pretty much.

I also hope the little fans aren't necessary because of the 'armour'. I hope that the 'armour' doesn't stop airflow to the point where without the fans you'd see 50+ MB temps.

You wouldn't be able to look in the manual (they only have Chinese on the FTP) and see if the system controls the speed of the little fans Flanker, would you?

In other news I stuck a new SSD in, the Intel 520 and it seems that a proper power saving sleep mode might now be available... a disaster as it removes my reason for an upgrade. However if my PC crashes just once between now and the end of April I'm buying Ivy Bridge.

[Dr. Vodka]

I ended up taking the armor off my sabertooth P67, mobo cooled better by all those 120mm fans in my case. It seems they've redesigned it somewhat, and added the much needed fan right off the bat. Nice! I suppose it'll be more than looks now, and actually cool the mobo better than last time.

[herderien]

I've just placed an order for one which should arrive on Tuesday of next week. It will be interesting to see how it goes! I'm slightly worried about the fans though. I've only had bad experiences with tiny fans on motherboards - Squellling!!!

At least they are optional.

no NDA in norway ? can't find any even on pre order in France

[jackbrennan2008]

I think we can all remember the little screamers that used to come on top of the SB years ago. I did get a couple of 40mm fans and glued them onto an Adaptec RAID card, entirely inaudible at 12v.... so hopefully Asus haven't been daft with the fans.

I did pick up a wee bit more information on the fan controls from Hardware Canucks. Have a look here and it's got a bit of info about the Fan Xpert. It is one of my pet hates with Asus though. The update the Fan Xpert software for new boards only, existing boards get stuck with the old software, despite there being no hardware limitation on it. My Crosshair IV Forumula Fan Xpert isn't quite as good as it could be, but they've not touched it since launch pretty much.

I also hope the little fans aren't necessary because of the 'armour'. I hope that the 'armour' doesn't stop airflow to the point where without the fans you'd see 50+ MB temps.

You wouldn't be able to look in the manual (they only have Chinese on the FTP) and see if the system controls the speed of the little fans Flanker, would you?

In other news I stuck a new SSD in, the Intel 520 and it seems that a proper power saving sleep mode might now be available... a disaster as it removes my reason for an upgrade. However if my PC crashes just once between now and the end of April I'm buying Ivy Bridge.

Lets hope ASUS did get it right with the fans, i can't really imagine why a company would sell extremely loud fans with a high end motherboard. I also checked out ASUS website for the manual, but i can't read Chinese .

I'm going to run the Sabertooth without any fans for the first week to see how temps are, and record them in Excel. Then I'll add 1 fan at a time to cool one of the cooling chambers and see how much of a difference it makes. If the temps without the fans are reasonable and adding fans doesn't make a world of difference I'll run without the fans. The only exception being if the fans are next to inaudible inside my 800D, then i'll leave them running.

With regards to your 520. I had a 240GB 520 at the top of my list, but decided to upgrade the motherboard first. All 3.0 USB ports on my current board are borked and the 2.0 ports were getting flaky for some odd reason. Anyhow the P67-UD7 will be my benching board now; that i can hammer! .

I think Z77 although not a big step up from P67 is at least a decent chipset to move up too seeing as the prices were quite good.

no NDA in norway ? can't find any even on pre order in France

They are on sale in Australia as well as a few stores in the USA. I can confirm Australia, but it's only what I've read online with regards to the USA.

I'm sure the NDA is global, so i don't see why France wouldn't have a few up for sale if everyone else is jumping the gun.

It's worth mentioning though that at my preferred online store they only have 3 boards for sale. 2x ASUS and 1x MSI, i found the Sabertooth at another online store who only have limited stock.

[@rne]

Over 20+ Z77 Boards in stock here in germany.
http://geizhals.de/?cat=mbp4_1155&as...uch=Z77&sort=p

[herderien]

thanks for the update, i could find some in a few online stores, but not on the main ones

[jackbrennan2008]

My board arrived last night. Very nice board, very easy to install all the components and a joy to work with. The extra fans don't make much noise at all when running at around 4000rpm. At 6000rpm you can hear them slightly, but still nothing major.

For those interested i ran the PC with those small fans on @ 4000rpm and the chipset was at around 32c. I then removed the fans and let the PC idle and the chipset went up to 37c. So the fans are not a complete gimmick, they do do a job .

I've been toying with overclocking both via the BIOS and via TurboV EVO (ASUS overclocking utility). I managed to reach 5Ghz without a problem and run a 3DMark 11 Performance run which was successfuly.

The Lucid Vurtue MVP software is really quite good. I've been able to convert a few movies using quicksync which is extremely useful. I've noticed that certain games also gain an increase in FPS when it's enabled.

A good example is 3DMark 11.

PC @ Stock with Lucid Vurtue MVP ON = P8792
PC @ Stock with Lucid Vurtue MVP OFF = ~P6700

Lucid Vurtue = ON + 5Ghz on 2600K and a mild overclock on the GTX 580 netted me P9651.

So gains are to be had with the technology. More FPS as well as Intel quicksync.

So far a very nice board to install and use as well as being a good overclocker to boot

[FlanK3r]

U can compare temperatues without fans and then after with fans installed.

[jackbrennan2008]

In my post above I wrote.

32 with
37 without

[FlanK3r]

this is good . I tested it at X79 Saber and it was interesting...

http://translate.google.cz/translate...ou%3Fstart%3D9

[jackbrennan2008]

I'm guessing the top graph where: Idle = 39 and Load = 54 is without the fans and the bottom graph where: Idle = 30 and Load = 32 is with the fans?

[herderien]

ood example is 3DMark 11.

Lucid Vurtue = ON + 5Ghz on 2600K and a mild overclock on the GTX 580 netted me P9651.

So gains are to be had with the technology. More FPS as well as Intel quicksync.

So far a very nice board to install and use as well as being a good overclocker to boot

thanks for sharing !

what kind of cooling / volts did you use to achieve 5Ghz ? was OC better with the sabertooth then with your previous board (if any) ?

[jackbrennan2008]

My rig is watercooled. I didn't bother trying to optimize my voltage use yet, i just used 1.50v seeing as i know it works @ 5Ghz. I'll have more of a play soon and get back with some results. I have a feeling that i'll be able to get the CPU stable at lower volts with this board. I'll post when i get some concrete results.

[FlanK3r]

I'm guessing the top graph where: Idle = 39 and Load = 54 is without the fans and the bottom graph where: Idle = 30 and Load = 32 is with the fans?

no...first 3 graphs are without fan at VRM, I/O area near heatpipe and PCH. Next two graphs are with fan at VRM and second with fan near I/O area.

[herderien]

i think i'll go for the sabertooth, i want to try water with a corsair H80 and i think the little blowers would partialy compensate the lack of air cooling through cpu.
am i wrong ?

ps : i'm totally noob to watercooling...