The Board - Layout

The ASUS GRYPHON Z87 features ASUS's usual "TUF" color scheme: a black PCB with slots in two hues of brown. With all the features of its older and much larger brothers included, the ASUS GRYPHON Z87 has a busy front and back.


Both the front and back of the socket are fairly free of stuff should you want to go the way of sub-zero insulation, although that's not the real focus of the ASUS GRYPHON Z87.


The ASUS GRYPHON Z87 only has four slots: three PCIe x16 slots and a single PCIe x1 slot. The upper two PCIE x16 slots connect to the CPU directly, while the lower slot connects to the Intel Z87 chipset with up to x4 PCIe 2.0 link connectivity. There are four DIMM slots on the ASUS GRYPHON Z87. Each supports DIMMs of up to 8 GB in density.


The lower edge of the board caries a relatively normal compliment of pin headers, but a couple buttons and a few other things here stand out. The ASUS GRYPHON Z87 has a total of seven fan headers. Six of these are 4-pin PWM headers while the seventh is a 3-pin header meant to be used with the auxiliary fan that is a part of the GRYPHON ARMOR kit.


The rear I/O area is pretty basic with just DVI-D and HDMI for video outputs, four USB 2.0- and USB 3.0 ports, each, and LAN- and audio ports. Six SATA 6 Gb/s ports that connect to the Intel Z87 chipset can be found on the board's right edge.