ASUS Sabertooth Z87 TUF Series Motherboard Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,453 words · ~7 min read
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this video is brought to you by cooler master featuring the seiden 240
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millimeter all-in-one CPU water cooling system check it out at
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www.coolermaster.usa.com
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my unboxing an overview of one of the physically heaviest motherboards that i
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have ever encountered this is the sabertooth z87 from ASUS part of their
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tough series or the ultimate force uh which is
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the notable things about this is that it really is tough so dust resistant
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physically resistant now with some of the armor features that are included and
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they come with five year warranties which is
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kind of freaking ridiculous for a consumer-grade
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motherboard nowadays they are not only
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are going to be providing a five-year warranty on these boards but they have significantly upgraded the components
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over the last generation tough series so they have
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altered the capacitors from 5k to 10k
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nichikon caps and not only that
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but they have added check this out
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a metal back plate to the entire back of the board now what this does is it
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improves cooling by a couple degrees it improves the rigidity of the board
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significantly this has less flex than any motherboard i've ever encountered
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between the thermal armor plastic plate on the front and then
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the back plate that covers the entire back of the board and it gives it less
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flex for things like heavy CPU coolers as well they've upgraded the vrm
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using what what they're calling as good as z77 rog which is not low end stuff by
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any stretch of the imagination and they've added some cool new features in
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terms of dust resistance that i'm going to cover as soon as we open up this
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huge accessory pack here now not only are the components upgraded but ASUS has
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also thrown more validation at the board so every single board on a board by
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board basis goes through a server grade validation process which means that yeah
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if they're gonna throw a five year warranty at it they're pretty sure that it's actually
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just not gonna die so let's get into these accessories because there's some
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really cool stuff in here that's unique compared to what ASUS offers with their
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rog series or their channel series boards first of all we've got a couple
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of cooling fans these are optional you don't have to use them but if you do
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decide to use them what you can do is you can apply more ventilation under the
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thermal armor by putting one of them here where the old sort of northbridge
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location would be and then another one out the back this allows you to directly
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exhaust air out of your computer that has been used to cool down the mosfet
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cooling that is beefy and ample and you
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can kind of see it if you look in there don't worry too much about it it's down there but it's covered up by that
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plastic thermal armor coating next accessory is
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a little ventilation piece so this makes the back panel look a little bit more
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appealing so you don't just see the fan hanging out the back of your computer
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thermal probes three thermal probes are included and what's really cool is that
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the software that is specific to tough
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series boards allows you to set up your thermal probes say what they're for you
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can name them you can assign profiles detect all of your fans and rpms fan
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expert 2 is still very much implemented on this board
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and it'll set everything up for you and allow you to optimize it in such a way
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that your system stays very very cool you can also use the software to quickly
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at a glance see if there are any problem areas in your computer where things are
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overheating because it's all about reliability with this board they've also
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included even more dust covers than
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before now traditionally on tough series boards we've got pci express dust covers
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as well as ddr3 slot dust covers now we
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even get dust covers for connectors on the back
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we get dust covers for SATA ports
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and we get dust covers for like check this out you even get dust
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covers for stuff that's not even included in your motherboard like a dvi
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port dust cover so very very very cool stuff if you live
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in a rugged environment or you're like you're taking your gaming pc to like a
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military base or something like that yeah get one of these
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which leads us to the board physically so you got your thermal radar software
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and all that cool stuff but if you can't connect really cool things to it then ultimately you're not going to care too
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much so your 8-pin CPU connector is up in the top left in its ideal location
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and you got three four excuse me four
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fan connectors up there one of which is their new patent-pending design that
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detects whether you're using a three pin or a four pin fan you've got four ddr3
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slots along the right hand edge another fan connector so that's a total of five
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so far your 24 pin connector on the right hand edge in its ideal location
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your usb 3 connector in its ideal
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ideal lure more ideal than ideal location on the right hand edge because
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it's right angle love right angle usb 3 connectors
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six SATA three six gigabit per second ports off of the Intel controller and
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then two more off a third-party controller down at the bottom of the
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board you've got your front panel connector a fifth and sixth fan header
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as well as two usb 2.0 headers a trusted platform module as well as a Thunderbolt
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header and a clear cmos jumper your pci
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express slot layout is pretty bog standard so you've got three PCIe 1x
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slots two p are three PCIe 16x slots
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which will run at 16x or 8x8x and then this one runs at 4x
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regardless now these guys right here are little vents that give you a couple
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of different options for cooling so check this out you can slide these back
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and forth so you can see that sliding action there so you can either take more
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airflow from a an active CPU cooling solution so for
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example if you had a downdraft fan you'd want to open these up so you can get
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more cooling to the vrm heatsinks however if you were using liquid cooling
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for example and you weren't going to get any benefit from additional airflow then
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instead you can close them which will allow you to hook up these fans that i
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talked about before here and here and take full advantage of those fans
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without wasting any of that airflow going out towards the CPU socket so who
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is this board for it's for people who want the ultimate in reliability the
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ultimate in cooling you know is it an overclocking board yeah of course i mean
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just because something's not rog doesn't mean that it's not gaming just because
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something's not an extreme grade rog board doesn't mean it's not optimal for
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overclocking this is for people who might not upgrade as often or even
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people who might be using it as in say for example more of like a workstation a
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value workstation environment where you want that reliability and that build
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quality but you don't need all the bells and whistles of a true workstation grade
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board for i o on the back things are pretty standard with four usb 2.0 ports
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four usb 3.0 ports supporting uasp a BIOS flashback button two e SATA ports
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optical audio out as well as HDMI and displayport ports an Intel powered
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gigabit Ethernet port and 7.1 audio out
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and if any of you noticed that this board had a CPU in it uh they don't all
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come with that mine was hand packed by jj with a with a hand-picked 4770k so i
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could really see what the platform was capable of and so yours will come with
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the usual protective cover
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over the CPU socket not with an actual CPU in it sorry to crush your hopes like
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that don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips for more unboxings reviews and
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