Conclusion
Performance
No surprises here. The ASUS Gryphon Z87 remained fiercely competitive at stock speeds in the benchmark tests. With the addition of the Thermal Armor kit, the board is ready to take on anything you throw at it.
Pricing
As of June 02, the Gryphon Z87 motherboard was available at Newegg.com for $169.99. The board was also available from other retailers such as Amazon.com for $170.00 with Prime shipping and TigerDirect.com for $179.99.
Conclusion
Before continuing with our final thoughts on this board, we would like to take this opportunity to give our friends at ASUS a hearty “Thank You” for giving us the opportunity and pleasure of reviewing the Gryphon Z87 motherboard. This was another board that intrigued me after having some hands-on time with it at the ASUS preview event. The board layout is flawless with no tight areas and several nice design wins. The board coloration follows the standard TUF line with its desert camouflage motif. From the initial unboxing to the conclusion of testing, I had absolutely no problems with the board. It ran like a dream. I thing I would like to mention is the placement of the CMOS battery. While it may look out of place in comparison to other boards, it isn't. Most board's place the batter in the middle of the PCI-Express slot area, making it hard to get to with other stuff in the board. Not here. The CMOS battery is placed just to the right of the primary PCI-Express x16 slot, making removal of the battery easy as pie (unless you have a larger than average CPU cooler that is).
The one thing that I was disappointed about with this board was the packaging of the Thermal Armor as an add-on kit rather than coming with the board. While you don't necessarily need the armor kit for board performance because it is already engineered that well, the Thermal Armor just adds that one more element to the board that screams "Come Get Some".
Strengths
- Stock performance
- CMOS battery placement – simply inspired
- Board layout and design
- Included ASUS utilities, including Thermal Radar 2 software
- UEFI BIOS design and usability
- Motherboard manual information
Weaknesses
- Lack of Thermal Armor with base kit
Thanks for the review. I’m
Thanks for the review. I’m glad I purchased this board!
@Nigel
bro have you bought
@Nigel
bro have you bought the armor kit also?
any link where to buy it?
No mate I have not seen one
No mate I have not seen one available anywhere in the UK. I think the armout is a gimmick anyway.
It is currently available on
It is currently available on Newegg. Additionally we have found in our testing that the Armor especially when used with the assist fan can provide lower operating temperatures part of this as a whole occurs as the armor kit works with thermal radar system ( the motherboard has on board temperature sensors ) these will adjust your system fans to provide optimal cooling.
You can get it from Newegg
You can get it from Newegg currently.
This has the same layout
This has the same layout problem that I see with virtually every Matx board. There is not enough space between the bottom of the memory sockets and the top PCI-e slot. If you watercool your GPU (or have a GPU with additional cooling on back of card) then you will struggle to use active fan cooling on the memory. If you have a low airflow case that will end up frying the memory.
It is not even a difficult problem to solve, just move the memory slots up the board by 1 cm, there is clearly space
why do yo want to actively
why do yo want to actively cool the memory…. that’s pointless and a big waste of cash.
If you have a nice big graphics card which is water cooled with a back plate, chances are you have a case with decent airflow as well also high speed memory is pointless unless you are using the on-board graphics which is clearly not the case here.
memory speeds at 2400 or
memory speeds at 2400 or greater ideally need active cooling to ensure heavy load stability especially over time. Additionally ram can impact compression and other performance aspects depending on your work load it can be a noticeable improvement. In most standard applications memory speed will not immediately impact performance but there are games that can also be impacted from increase in memory speed as opposed to just the performance increase that can be impacted from the discrete GPU. If you consider at times this swing of 3 to 5 frames depending on the engine could bring up a minimum frame rate this is something that should be factored in a high performance build.
Does the Armor Kit affect to
Does the Armor Kit affect to the board temperatures in any way? And when does it retail?
Not sure on the retail
Not sure on the retail release of the armor kit, but it should be soon.
As far as temps, we will have a follow-up review covering the amor kit and its impacts on temperatures and board performance in the near future.
Thanks…
I’d like to ask about the
I’d like to ask about the power consumption levels on this board compared to other boards
I’m planning my next build on
I’m planning my next build on this motherboard. But I’m still curious about the back-plate. Is it included with the board or must be purchased separately?
If you are talking about the
If you are talking about the Fortifier back plate, it is not included in the base board packaging. You must purchase the Gryphon Armor Kit to get the armor and the fortifier back plate…
Do any 1150 micro mb come
Do any 1150 micro mb come with both 4 ram slots and mpci onboard for taking an 11ac card today ? As this is holding up any buying choices I make in the next few weeks to build a new PC here…. I wonder why I can’t seem to buy what I want and potentially need sooner than later…. and were might I find a good wireless 11AC card to use in the UK today !
The maximus VI gene has on
The maximus VI gene has on board support for mini PCIe wireless as well as support for M.2 flash storage. Depending on your total expansion needs though you could easily go with a higher performing 3×3 PCIe based solution like our PCE-AC66.
I have the Z87 Gryphon mATX
I have the Z87 Gryphon mATX mobo with a Haswell i5-4670K unlocked CPU. When I run AI Suite III, there are no “Dual Intelligent Processor” pages. At least, I can’t find them.
–> Were you really running this on a Gryphon? If so, PLEASE tell me how to get from the Thermal Radar pages to the DIP pages.
I’m suspecting that the Gryphon actually doesn’t have DIPs, and that Asus is carefully not mentioning this fact in all the hype.
Thanks
FB
That sucks. 🙁
Did you find
That sucks. 🙁
Did you find out what the situation is for the Gryphon?
Will the NH-D14 block the 1st
Will the NH-D14 block the 1st PCI-E x16 slot?
“In the upper left quadrant
“In the upper left quadrant of the board are the front panel audio header, S/PDIF output header, Thunderbolt device header, CHA_FAN4 header, clear CMOS jumper, and Trusted Platform Module (TPM) header.”
So is Thunderbolt working or not? Curious as to why you mention it, and did not test it.
Does Gryphon have the usb3
Does Gryphon have the usb3 sleep problem ?
If so, is there an expected date for the “fixed” batch to hit the shops ?
Generally do the maufacturers release fixed boards as old stock ends in each flavor of board ? Or do they decide on a fixed date to release all boards with fixes on the one date ?
You mention a BIOS switch
You mention a BIOS switch that enables you to choose between the primary and secondary bios, but I can’t seem to find the switch. Does it really have one? I might have accidentally bricked mine.
This was noted incorrectly in
This was noted incorrectly in the review. Should you need to I would recommend you attempt to recover the UEFI ( bios ) via USB Bios Flashback.
i been having a lot problems
i been having a lot problems with the sound
it shows that is sound coming out but no noise
please can someone help me
please can someone help me with this problem
Hello
thanks for a nice
Hello
thanks for a nice review. Nice to see NHD14 is ok for ram modules, but is not that cooler wide enough so it will collide with dedicated graphic card in PCIE 3.0 slot? Seems more than tight from the picture. The 14cm fan could be the issue, but that can be replaced with 12cm one. I would like to buy this board for its 5y warranty, got NHD14 and r9 280x already. Thanks for the answer.
This review contains
This review contains falsehoods, saying that “The main app opens to either the Thermal Radar 2 or Dual Intelligent Processors 4 page, ..”
The Grypnon does NOT include DIP afaik. It has EPU and Turbo V Evo (which is similar to TPU), but not the TPU + EPU = DIP feature.
Whether or not this is is ASUS providing misleading info or the reviewer not paying attention, this has apparently already duped one buyer.
@Waki Noctua (NH D14) has a compatibility list on their website and they would have listed this issue. Please double check with them, but I believe the D14 will not obstrucy the 1st PCIe slot.
What is the deal with the
What is the deal with the Thunderbolt header on this board. Is it operational? Or can it be made operational?