Test System

Initial Setup

Initial boot-up with the ASUS GRYPHON Z87 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.

Some boards have custom Turbo profiles that boost performance at "stock" settings, giving the appearance of having more performance than they really should. ASUS has told me that they don't condone such custom profiles without informing the user but do understand that some users want this function to be available. A boosted Turbo profile becomes available when XMP is enabled, but it can simply be disabled via an option in the BIOS. 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 do this without giving the end user a way to turn it off, or don't explicitly state doing so. I'm glad ASUS took the high ground by disabling such features enabled at default. For more information on Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan, check their site found HERE


Getting the board with the GRYPHON ARMOR kit installed into the test bench was very easy. With a high-end ASUS MATRIX HD7970 3 GB installed into the ASUS GRYPHON Z87, there's just enough room here, and I could see the ARMOR peeking out from below the VGA card.


With the large card and my Coolermaster TPC812 in place, there was just enough room for everything to fit. The close proximity of the VGA's backplate to the DIMM slots highlights ASUS's use of these clip-less DIMM slots. Not all VGAs use backplates, but when they do, small things like this are of the utmost importance. Those clip-less slots aren't my personal favorite, but they do work well in situations where space is such a commodity.


Even though everything was so tight, there was just the perfect amount of room. I really like how the GRYPHON ARMOR wraps around the entire board's surface, even between the DIMM slots and the 24-pin power plug.


The SATA ports at the board's bottom edge are still easily accessible, and I had no issues with the cooling fan at the rear of the cooler, even though the GRYPHON ARMOR adds height over the VRMs.

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.


Power consumption with the ASUS GRYPHON Z87 was great at idle and right where I expected it to be at load. ASUS's tight VRM management and this board's Turbo profiles go a long way towards curtailing power consumption while keeping performance high. It's quite interesting to note that although idle power consumption is much better on the ASUS GRYPHON Z87 than the MSI Z87-GD65 GAMING, load numbers are fairly close. ASUS clearly has better automatic BIOS optimizations for those wanting to push clocks while saving power. Does this affect benchmark results too?