Asus Z77-A (Z77) Motherboard Review

To be a little honest, when I took this board out of its box this morning and had a look around, I wasn’t expecting as much as what I have seen from the test results. By now I should have learnt my lesson and realised that you should always expect the unexpected. There are a number of factors that contribute to this decision, and the most notable of these has to be the inclusion of HDMI support for the on-board graphics, its surprising ability to overclock and handles the CPU’s hidden performance and its benchmark results.

Typically with a board of this nature I’d expect to see it lower down in the results charts, but the Z77-A consistently pits itself against entry-mid range boards from other partners, showing that Asus put the same level of detail, care and attention into the bottom line motherboards as they do top of the line.

I know a number of people will be wondering why on earth there are still native PS/2 ports and VGA on the I/O as well as twin PCI slots on the board itself. As I mentioned before there is a very good reason for this and it wasn’t until recently when I sat and thought about it, that I myself realised the reasoning for this. Whilst the vast majority of you who are reading this come from western Europe and America where technology is very much up to date and where all peripherals follow the latest and greatest technologies such as USB3.0 and PCIe gen 3; there are a group of readers that may not be so fortunate or have such budgets to work with. In such regions, hardware may not so easy to get hold of or as freely available, so its a case of getting your hands on what you can, but its only worth it if your motherboard supports it.

Naturally when you think about it, it makes complete sense to include such features and by doing so, Asus can fill a gap in the market that other brands may be missing out on, thus giving them a greater market share in that region. Not digressing too far from the product though, its has to be said for a board that costs around £80 / $124 / €94, there is a lot on offer and given the performance that can be had at this price point, budget gaming just became more affordable and consequently the ‘bang for buck’ factor grows as well.

So where does this board rank in my opinion? Well its clear to say that its no ROG board, and that is obvious, but its no couch potato either. Considering this is a sub £100 board with performance that shows it can punch well above its weight, taking on some bigger boards in the Z77 range, perhaps there is something more to the budget market than what one may make out to be. After a heap of performance and you’re on a tight budget – give it a go – you won’t be disappointed.