14 DAY TRIAL // Unlike ECS, ASUS is being quite forthcoming in regard to its motherboard lineup that is supposed to welcome Intel's Haswell series of central processing units (fourth-generation Core).
There are five motherboards based on the Z87 chipset: Z87-C, Z87-A, Z87-PLUS, Z87-PRO and Z87-DELUXE.
The first two are entry-level models, the Z87-PLUS, Z87-PRO are in the middle range, and the Z87-DELUXE is the flagship.
Of course, Z87-C and Z87-A are low-end only compared to the other three. The collection itself is still positioned on the top tier of the motherboard industry.
The first things people might notice about the socket LGA 1150 motherboards is the new color scheme of black and yellow with gold accents (the heatsinks over the VRM and PCH are the golden components).
Z87-DELUXE has 16-phase CPU power, three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 wired to the CPU (x16/NC/NC or x8/x8/NC or x8/x4/x4), four PCI Express x1 slots, ten SATA 6 Gbps ports, eight USB 3.0 ports and dual Gigabit Ethernet, plus 802.11ac WiFi and several display links (HDMI, DisplayPort, etc.).
The specifications of the other motherboards get more modest the farther back in the list you go. Z87-PRO, for instance sticks close, with 8 SATA 6 Gbps and 2 SATA 3 Gbps ports, and the same expansion slot layout as DELUXE.
The Z87-C is clearly made to just cover the basics though, with 4-phase CPU power, a single PCI Express 3.0 x16 slot, a PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (4x electrical), two PCI Express x1 slots, three legacy PCI slots, four USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, 8-channel HD audio and three video outputs (DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI). As the cheapest Z87-based motherboard from ASUS, it could sell for less than $100 / €100.
See the photos to get a good look at the main assets of each new ASUS desktop platform.
