Asus Z97-WS Motherboard First Looks, and Review

[acidydragon]

Hello all,

Welcome to my review of the Asus Z97-WS board.

 

First Thoughts:

Awesome board, with all of the needed bells and whistles, and none of the gimmick-ie ones.

I'm very happy that it has two Ethernet ports, and two USB 3.0 Internal headers.

 

The color scheme is a bit weird, as I've never seen the appeal of Gold in computers, but some paint will help with that.

 

Installation:

This section may be a tad bad, but it's mostly my fault.

Upon receiving the board, I did a quick assembly outside of my case.

It powered for about 10 seconds, stopped, and reset itself. It did this twice before I turned it off, and double checked all of the connectors.

They all seemed fine, so I tried again. It booted flawlessly into a splash screen.

 

Upon seeing this, I was delighted, turned it off, and took the time to take apart my rig enough to switch out the motherboards. (Old: FX 8320, Asus Sabertooth 990fx r2.0)

 

Somewhere in here, I uninstalled the heatsinks, and spray painted them black. Looks great

 

I installed the motherboard in my case, with both graphics cards, all the plugs, and got ready to boot.

One, two, three, power button... and nothing.

 

The post code readouts said ddFE, which means absolutely nothing in the motherboard handbook.

Terrified that I screwed it up, I checked every cable, and tried a few more times, every time receiving ddFE.

 

I then stripped the motherboard of every connector that wasn't necessary for use.

Tried again, and ddFE! GAHH!!

At this point, I was tired, it was 3 AM, and I decided it was time to sleep.

 

After a good nights rest, I looked into the responses of my thread on LTT, to find that people were generally not knowing, or unhelpful.

 

I decided just to go look at my motherboard one last time, when something caught my eye.

A little bit of gold on my RAM, and a quick check later, verified that my RAM wasn't seated well.

 

Elated that the issue wasn't catastrophic, I reseated the RAM, and optimistically pressed the power button.

Boot, Post code LED's flashing numbers faster than I could figure out what they said, and Splash screen!

 

Wooo!

 

Seeing this, I booted down, and reattached my USB headers, SATA cable, and decided to boot again.

 

Button, power, SPARK?... The included Firewire/USB 2.0 thing that comes with the board had a nice fire spark come out of the USB 2 header. Mmmmm...

I quickly shut off the machine, unplugged this included thing, and removed it from my case.

 

It might have been a bad connection, but I don't care to risk it, and 2 USB ports aren't worth paying another 300 dollars for a motherboard.

 

And one more time, Button, boot, BIOS, perfect.

Everything looks awesome, I got into my OS without having to reinstall my OS (awesome), and I've installed the drivers from ASUS.

 

Overclocking:
N/a, coming soon from a reviewer near you.

 

Conclusion: (thus far)

I love the board. Every mistake (minus the USB thing... I think), was my fault, but the board took it like a champ, and is purring like a kitten. (Literally purring... Stock CPU cooler.)

The board looks great (after modification), and has features that I plan to take all advantage of.

[FireFox]

What, no pictures?

[acidydragon]

What, no pictures?

I'll update in a bit.

I took pics on my phone, but it's dead.

[FireFox]

I'll update in a bit.

I took pics on my phone, but it's dead.

 

Ahh well with an Asus WS board needs to take its time, do it justice mate

[Epitome]

@acidydragon What spray paint did you use?

[shiftberry]

 

judging by your review and picture itself, it seems quite amazing despite its price

[acidydragon]

@acidydragon What spray paint did you use?

Matt black... I'll get you brand name in a bit.