Test System

Initial Setup

Initial boot-up with the ASRock Z87E-ITX was quick and simple, and installing device drivers off the CD was quick and painless. There's not a lot for me to say here because everything worked exactly as expected, and I noticed that the ASRock Z87E-ITX, unlike many other products I have tested recently, runs with a normal Turbo profile.

Some boards have custom Turbo profiles that boost performance at "stock" settings, giving the appearance of having more performance than they really do. A boosted Turbo profile becomes available on some products when XMP is enabled or, at other times, through a switch in the BIOS. ASRock's current Z87E-ITX BIOS does not use such a profile by default. I personally feel that a coupon for Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan should be included in the box to protect against CPU failures if boards use a Turbo profile without giving the end user a way to turn it off or don't explicitly state doing so. For more information on Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan, check their site found HERE.


Installed into one of the BitFenix Prodigy cases I have been using for mITX testing, the ASRock Z87E-ITX fits nicely, and getting it all wired up was actually far easier than expected given that some of the pin headers were in odd locations compared to a full ATX-sized product. Wiring in the front panel audio ports, I noticed that there was clearly space specifically for such wiring by the PCIe slot, a nice touch making routing those cables that much easier. It is also worth mentioning that there is quite a lot of space between the socket and the PCIe slot considering the board's small size, seemingly optimized to fit some of those larger tower coolers onto the ASRock Z87E-ITX without much difficulty, although obviously not every cooler is going to work here. There's not much else to say about getting the board installed as there simply is not a lot to deal with here on such small boards.

Power Consumption

We measure CPU power consumption since one of our first tasks is to truly verify system stability. I isolate the power coming through the 8-pin ATX connector using an in-line meter that provides voltage and current readings, and total wattage passed through. While this may not prove to isolate the CPU power draw in all instances, it does serve as a good indicator of board efficiency and effective VRM design. Total system power consumption is no longer reported as this figure can change depending on what VGA is installed. The sole board-only power measurements possible without physically modifying a motherboard are those taken via the 8-pin CPU connector, making it the only figure of value worth reporting. I use wPrime with eight threads selected in the options since it provides a consistently high workload throughout the full length of the test and runs long enough for the VRM and CPU to produce a fair bit of heat. Most average workloads will draw far less than this, although distributed computing applications are quite similar. This is not supposed to test stability since I use several other applications to do so, but merely to provide repeatable power draw numbers that anyone can replicate. The meter used is an off-the-shelf Zalman unit that has been on the market for some time. It provides quite similar results in my test environment when compared with a FLUKE 337 clamp meter.


The ASRock Z87E-ITX's power consumption was decent, especially considering its small size. With space left for VRM components a bit restricted, ASRock did a fantastic job of choosing parts that remain efficient under high load; parts you would see on a full-sized board likely to contain twice the number of power phases. Getting similar numbers to full-sized boards was what I was looking for and is exactly what I got. Well done, ASRock!