Hardware Asus Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1 Review

Wish we could see the Z170 boards compared against the old Z97 chipset. Would help us gauge the value in upgrading. I suspect that the performance gains are minimal and in many cases with early drivers, worse.

 

You shouldn't be upgrading for performance gains when it comes to Skylake unless you are running at least two generations or older of CPU architecture. Only then will you notice any real improvement (~20%+) in application performance. If its just a performance increase in games your after, then I wouldn't even bother with that proviso TBH, a faster GPU will be a much better way to spend your money.

The only real reason to upgrade to Z170 is for support of the latest USB, SSD and DDR 4 standards.

 

Same goes for my P67 Sabertooth.

 

Hum, the Sabertooth used to be between the "normal" boards and the "Maximuss" or ROG boards in terms of price and features.
Now it's up there with the Maximusses pricewise yet it doesn't perform any better than the Z170 Pro Gaming, which is ~70pounds less.

Meh.

 

Exactly what I was thinking. I bought my P67 at £140 when it was released.
Firstly, because it looked unique at the time. And secondly, it was a pretty good overclocker with a good few features.
Now, it's £200 with not much of that unique appeal left (a lot of boards have this flare for design, albeit without the 'TUF' armour), and the same clocking skills as a board that is near half the price.

I don't see the draw any more.

 

The removable 'tuf' armour is a nice feature for ease of custom, colour coded spray paint jobs I suppose, other than that I don't see the need for a £200 Z170 Motherboard.

 

In terms of performance all Z170 Skylake boards will be there or there abouts, with overclocking you may see some differences emerge but mostly performance will be silicon-dependent (I think Antony's results show this well as they vary only between 4.6-4.9GHz).

Sabertooth is mainly about offering an abundance of extra monitoring features and higher quality components, more thoroughly tested reliability. Some of the things the Sabertooth has that ROG boards do not have include:

1) The Thermal Armour;
2) The TUF fortifier motherboard backplate;
3) The most fan headers and control options of any ASUS Z170 board (provided by the TUF ICe chip, 11 adjustable DC/PWM fan headers in total 1 x CPU fan
header, 1 x Water Pump header, 6 x Chassis fan headers, 3 x Assistant fan headers) as well as 13 thermal sensor options.
4) Thermal Radar 2 software for monitoring all the temperatures and fans;
5) A 5 Year Warranty

All these extra things add cost, hence why the Z170 Sabertooth has premium pricing, but the cost is arguably well worth it for specific types of users!

 

I love these boards for their reinforcing spine (I ****ing hate it when motherboards flex), their 5-year warranty, and the longevity that comes with it.

After suffering through failed mobos and random bluescreens, my last two mobos have been TUF ones. My next ones will probably also be TUF. It's a shame the price relative to the 'gamer' boards have gone up, though.

 

So here's my question... When are we going to see a 'TUF' Sabertooth ITX board? We already have a ROG, why not a Sabertooth?

 

There used to be a mATX one, the "Gryphon"

 

While I'd love to have the backplate of the Mk1 , I'm going to hope for the Mk2 version soon .
The number of fan headers and fan control, the high grade components, BIOS, and the warranty are the important points for me.
I'm willing to pay the $169 the old Mk2 currently costs , but not so keen on paying the $249 for the Mk1

 

I still don't understand the point of a motherboard backplate, they seem functionally useless. The less said about that 'armour', the better.

Motherboard component reliability has long since exceeded the useful life of the board.

The real value adds are better/more up to date bioses and good board management software and integration with sensors/products. Childish chunks of plastic and metal don't do anything useful.

This board seems very overpriced.

 

I wonder if it matters which DIMM slots you use in paired use ?
I ask because you used slots A1 and B1 and I notice in the manual it states using A2 and B2 is the "recommended" slot use for 2 DIMMs