WEBVTT

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It's pretty hard to get me excited about a motherboard by putting a bunch of

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flashy lights in my face these days. I haven't even been on the DIY PC scene

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that long compared to some folks. But I still feel like at this point I've kind

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of seen it all and I've become jaded enough about these often barely

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functional features that all I want is a motherboard manufacturer to make a

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product that isues all of that nonsense and gives me a back to basics board that

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just plain works no matter what you throw at it. I'm starting to get the

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feeling that deep down ASUS knows this because in spite of the fact that they

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just launched like a dozen Z97 motherboards or something like that,

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they offered to send me a grand total of one of them, the Z97WS, or as I'm

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calling it, the Lionus edition.

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The CMTORM SF17 uses a massive 18 cm fan

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to cool your gaming notebook, and it adds a four- port USB hub. Click now to

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learn more. The WS in the model number

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stands for wonderful stability. And when ASUS does build a board in this series

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on a given chipset, they only do one because when you trim the fat and leave

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only the good stuff, you only need one model. It's boring looking with no LEDs,

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doesn't have any OC panels, carries almost no consumerfriendly features like

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onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and lacks some of the really hardcore overclocking

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tuning options that you might find on an ROG series board. And yet, it costs the

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same as these featureladen, you know, race car type options. So, what the heck

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is up with that? Well, the money that would have been spent in R&D on features

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that a small fraction of a fraction of the user base will use gets spent on

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workstation grade componentry, extremely flexible expansion, and on validating WS

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boards with a huge variety of hardware that goes beyond the traditional well,

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it works with AMD graphics cards and NVIDIA graphics cards, so I guess it's

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okay treatment that many motherboards get. We're talking RAID cards, high-end

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nick cards, PCIe storage cards, and even much more obscure stuff than that. All

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right, so what comes with it? You get an IO shield, a USB 2/Wire PCI bracket, a

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serial PCI bracket, eight SATA 36 GB per

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second cables, two-way, 3-way, and four-way SLI bridges, those Q connector

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blocks that make it easier to plug in your front switches, a manual, a driver

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disc, and finally the motherboard itself. Now, I said already it's boring

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looking, but I guess now you guys see my point. I prefer the full-on borggasm

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look with a black PCB and just plain silver accents. But I guess if I had to

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have a gold motherboard, I'll take a practical looking one like this over a

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blingy tacky one like some of the ones I've seen in the past. Our feature tour

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begins at the CPU socket where we'll find support for current generation LGA1

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1150 Haswell and Haswell refresh processors with promises of future

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Broadwell support. a nice little thing to have in your pocket. Those CPUs all

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share a common memory support scheme. So to the right of the socket, you'll find four DDR3 memory slots that run in dual

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channel mode. Power to the CPU and RAM is handled by a next generation all

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digital power design with eight phases for the CPU and two for the memory. And

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it includes some pretty seriously impressive Japanese capacitors that are

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rated at an industryleading 12,000 hours

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of operation at 150° C. Well higher than

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any PC should get. On the top edge, we find hardware buttons for TPU and EPU

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optimizations. I generally don't touch them, but if you want to, then TPU

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boosts CPU performance a bit, and EPU reduces power consumption a little bit.

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Next to those switches, we've got a couple more useful switches. The memo K

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button boots the PC with super safe memory settings. So, even with finicky

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RAM, you can get into the BIOS and make the adjustments you need to. And the XMP

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switch lets you enable performance optimized memory profiles without any

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software configuration. This could be handy since the board does support

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memory speeds up to 3,300 MHz out of the

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box. Moving down the right hand side is the 24 pin connector that aside from

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being in the correct position on the right hand edge, ASUS claims is

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exceptional because it uses a new design that improves contact with your power

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supply connector, reducing the risk of burning out the contacts. Neato under

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that are two USB3 front headers for a total of 10 USB 3 ports on the board.

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And then the doctor power switch that enables OS monitoring of your power

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supply to help you detect a failing unit. Haven't got a dead power supply

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that I feel like plugging into a working board to test it, but I guess that sounds pretty cool. Continuing on down,

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we've got either eight SATA 36 GB per second ports with six of them coming off

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of an Intel chipset and two off of a secondary as media one or four Intel

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SATA 3 ports and two SATA Express 10

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Gbit per second ports. one powered off the Intel chipset and one off the Asdia

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chipset. This will provide a ton of expansion options as SATA Express drives

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start showing up, but it also doesn't end there. There's an M2 slot right next

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to them for a total of three SSDs that can be plugged right into PCI Express

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rather than just SATA for improved throughput and latency. Right on. Above

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the usual contingent of audio, FireWire, serial, USB 2, TPM, and front panel

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connector headers are the only necessary onboard buttons that you might find

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useful for testbench use, like power, reset, and clear SIMOS. No, you know,

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fancy esoteric functionality there. You'll also find a fourdigit post

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readout that will give you useful diagnostic information. But if you can't

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see it because, you know, the numbers move too fast or because there's a

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graphics card in the way of the board and you, you know, you can't see it,

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don't worry. You can dump the logs onto a USB drive using the Q code logger

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button right next to the USB BIOS flashback button on the rear panel that

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lets you flash the BIOS without a CPU installed. Wicked expansion is another

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pillar of WS boards. And with four PCI Express Gen 3 16X slots that can

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simultaneously operate an 8X mode, this iteration doesn't disappoint. That means

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you can throw four AMD or NVIDIA graphics cards in here in SLI or

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Crossfire for gaming. Or you can simply load it up with a bunch of compute cards

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for workstation use. You can also fill it up with red rockets, raid cards, or

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whatever else you want to do because boards like this are made for future

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growth. Love it. Just make sure that you

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use that six pin auxiliary connector above the top slot if you want to load

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her up, so to speak. Even the fancy 24 pin connector likely won't save the

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board from quad overclocked R9290X's

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if you don't use that auxiliary connector. Finishing up in the corner,

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we find a quality, if unexceptional, onboard audio solution that uses the

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Realtech ALC 1150 codec. I use a separate amplifier anyway. So, this is

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more than good enough for my needs. But, if you're expecting your motherboard to

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drive fancy 300 to 600 ohm impedance headphones, you may want to rethink

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something about your setup. On the back of the board, we find some good stuff.

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And actually, my first complaint about it. I'll start with the good stuff. two

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USB 2 ports, six USB 3 ports, dual Intel gigabit LAN, 7.1 analog audio out with

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goldplated connectors, e SATA 6 Gbit per second, optical audio out, a display

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port output, and an HDMI port. Now, the

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glaring emission in what is otherwise a

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perfect workstation grade board, that mini DisplayPort connector. While it

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does enable three concurrent displays, it really should, in my mind, be a

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Thunderbolt 2 port on a board of this caliber. ASUS does have their

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Thunderbolt header to allow this functionality to be added with an add-in

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card, but I still wish it was on board and they weren't asking me to spend more

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money and waste a waste a PCIe slot on it after the fact. Well, that was it.

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That was my only complaint. Aside from the stuff I just mentioned, you've got the usual ASUS essentials, including

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their easy to navigate UFI BIOS, onboard temperature probes, their automagical

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fan speed tuning that can create fan speed profiles with the six onboard

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three or four pin fan headers that damically adapt to your system load. And

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finally, due to its build quality and BIOS optimization, this WS board has

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enough overclocking options to run with the best of them. So, it's all basically

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there. But that's not the focus here, and you won't find marketing blurs about

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that on the box or on the product page. No. While, as usual, ASUS's messaging is

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a little rough when they try to emphasize their quality control

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standards and compatibility testing, the message still gets through. And based on

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my experience with their WS-class boards, I can't recommend anything more

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heartily. I still like some flashy lights on my fans and water cooling

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tubing or whatever. But when it comes to the motherboard, an often overlooked

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component that does so little for performance these days, but so much for

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smooth operation, I'll take a WS board any day of the week if I could choose

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any board on the market, which I can, so I did. Thank you for watching my

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overview of the Z97WS. Just like with all of my videos, you can find a link

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with pricing and availability that includes my affiliate code in the video description under the like, share, and

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dislike buttons, which I'd love for you to use accordingly. Also, in the video

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description is a support link where you can give us a monthly contribution, buy

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a t-shirt like this one, or change your Amazon bookmarks to ones that include

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our affiliate code, so we get a small kickback whenever you buy lozenes or

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whatever. Thank you for watching, guys. I hope you enjoyed this video as much as

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we enjoyed making it. And don't forget to mash that subscribe button if you

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haven't already. By the way, that bit at the beginning about how WS stands for

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wonderfully stable or whatever I said stands for workstation. I was just

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messing with you. Well,