The Board - A Closer Look

ASUS has truly departed from past products esthetically by proudly declaring so with a logo across the left CPU VRM heatsink. The PCH cooler is a round black-rimmed golden circle, a completely different shape than on ANY other motherboard, never mind one by ASUS. The way it catches light makes taking pictures of it kind of difficult.


The 16-phase CPU VRM features the same sort of color with yet another odd mix of shapes comprising that large chunk of metal that sits over the VRM MOSFETs. The dual-phase DIMM VRM does not get any heatsinks at all, but feature the same chokes as the CPU VRM.


There are dual Intel Gigabit LAN controllers on the ASUS Z97-DELUXE, so no matter which Intel controller you favor, you have options.


The audio design is similar to those of past ASUS designs, with a break in the CPB's electrical connectivity that separates the audio circuit from the rest of the board by as much as possible. Dubbed Crystal Sound 2, the Realtek ALC1150 CODEC is a newer CODEC that boasts pretty decent audio in nearly every instance I have experienced.


ASMedia parts abound everywhere, with one by the M.2 plug and another over by the USB 3.0 ports driving those ports to incredible speeds. You can also see the specially fused link ASUS designed to go with those ports.


I found a few other ASMedia controllers on the ASUS Z97-DELUXE. Each controller serves a different function.


Part of ASUS's design are the included onboard buttons and the functionality they provide, which includes the consolidation of BIOS and system power-on functions to one area. A set of switches also enable or disable the TPU and EPU functions, with TPU functionality now featuring two different performance boots and close-by LEDs indicating whether they have been enabled.


Near the top-right corner are physical MemOK! and EZ XMP controls; MemOK! makes sure your installed DIMMs can boot and EZ XMP enables XMP functions of installed DIMMs without having to enter the BIOS.


Providing all those monitoring functions and the fan control options is the usual Nuvoton Super I/O, but when it comes to those TPU functions, I found not just one, but two TPU chips on the Z97-DELUXE, one on the front and the other on the rear.


Once you press the power switch, the system will power up, with a series of LEDs in different places lighting up in succession to indicate which phase of the boot process the board is in, so you will have a good idea of the area with a problem should that boot fail; CPU and DRAM LEDs light up first, of course.


After those two, VGA and BOOT device LEDs will light up, although you might miss those if you have Window8/8.1 installed and FAST BOOT enabled, as it all happens so quickly.