ASUS Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1 LGA 1151 Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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ASUS Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1 LGA 1151 Review - In our opinion ASUS’ TUF series motherboards target the sweet spot in regard to features, price, and performance. TUF motherboards give you more features than most mid-range motherboards but lack certain features found on the high end. The Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1 is the flagship part of the current TUF series.
 
meh it's nice but I'm glad I went with the Deluxe. Great review though.
 
On page 1: "On the back panel you will find the following ports: 5x USB 2.0 ports, 2x, RJ-45 ports, 5x mini-stereo jacks..." 2x what?
On page 4: "The quality of the audio solution was certainly solid. I wasn’t blown away as I was with the Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1’s onboard audio or anything like that." Did you mean to refer to a motherboard other than the one you were reviewing?
 
Would of gone with this mobo if it had the same wifi antenna the deluxe does.... Oh well.
 
evilsofa said:
On page 1: "On the back panel you will find the following ports: 5x USB 2.0 ports, 2x, RJ-45 ports, 5x mini-stereo jacks..." 2x what?
Click to expand...

Think he was right....2x nothing else. :)

1447055229VMOGurvDXp_1_17_l.jpg


evilsofa said:
On page 4: "The quality of the audio solution was certainly solid. I wasn’t blown away as I was with the Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1’s onboard audio or anything like that." Did you mean to refer to a motherboard other than the one you were reviewing?
Click to expand...

That is the stupid editor's mistake, not Dan's. I will make sure he fixed that.
 
That armor is one of the reasons I love my Maximus VI Formula. Just looks so damn nice.
 
From the ASUS site:

2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8)
1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (max at x4 mode) *1
3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x1
Click to expand...

It would seem this board doesn't have enough PCIe slots at a fast enough speed to run quad SLI as mentioned in the article, unless I'm missing something, or the ASUS site is wrong?
 
SonOfMore said:
It would seem this board doesn't have enough PCIe slots at a fast enough speed to run quad SLI as mentioned in the article, unless I'm missing something, or the ASUS site is wrong?
Click to expand...

Quad-SLI is two dual-GPU cards. 4-way SLI is four single-GPU cards. The Z170 chipset will supply each of two cards with x8 lanes of PCI-3.0, which is plenty.
 
SonOfMore said:
From the ASUS site:



It would seem this board doesn't have enough PCIe slots at a fast enough speed to run quad SLI as mentioned in the article, unless I'm missing something, or the ASUS site is wrong?
Click to expand...

evilsofa said:
Quad-SLI is two dual-GPU cards. 4-way SLI is four single-GPU cards. The Z170 chipset will supply each of two cards with x8 lanes of PCI-3.0, which is plenty.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Quad-SLi and 4-Way SLI are different. Nvidia doesn't support running 4-Way SLI on less than an 8x8x8x8 PCIe lane configuration.
 
Thanks for the clarification. When I saw that the article said it supports Quad SLI and I tried adding up the slots, I knew there had to be an explanation. :)
 
My current mobo is a Sabretooth from the last generation and while there wasn't any OC software out of the box there was something you could download from the Asus website and also Intel has some OC software that worked with it as well. The gimmics that come with the mobo add to assembly time but some extra fans are not a bad thing. I did OC my system at first but I find I get the performance I need from the stock clock as well as have a nice quiet system.
 
Morelian said:
My current mobo is a Sabretooth from the last generation and while there wasn't any OC software out of the box there was something you could download from the Asus website and also Intel has some OC software that worked with it as well. The gimmics that come with the mobo add to assembly time but some extra fans are not a bad thing. I did OC my system at first but I find I get the performance I need from the stock clock as well as have a nice quiet system.
Click to expand...

You can also overclock within the BIOS which is probably what most people do anyway. The software isn't a big deal in that regard, I just disagree with ASUS gimping it on the TUF series.
 
Hallo Dan, Kyle
Thanks for the informative article. My plan is to build a silent PC. Do the fans for the Thermal Armor make a lot of noise? Can the speed be controlled and if yes, is there still enough cooling in silent operation?
 
turbomanJB said:
Hallo Dan, Kyle
Thanks for the informative article. My plan is to build a silent PC. Do the fans for the Thermal Armor make a lot of noise? Can the speed be controlled and if yes, is there still enough cooling in silent operation?
Click to expand...

If you are going for silence I'd go with a motherboard that doesn't have active cooling on it. These fans get drowned out in a normal machine by case fans and the GPU, but they ate going to be quite noticeable in a machine that's built to be quiet. You can control the speed on these or not use them if you want, but the board will run too hot like that.
 
mls1995 said:
Better than Asus real bench? I used real bench to overclock my 6700k and the system is stable but if be Willing to try this if it makes a difference .
Click to expand...

I haven't tried Real Bench, but the XTU is pretty damn good. Less complex than AI Suite III and just plain better than Command Center or EasyTune.
 
mls1995 said:
Better than Asus real bench? I used real bench to overclock my 6700k and the system is stable but if be Willing to try this if it makes a difference .
Click to expand...

Realbench is just a stress test. Intel XTU is both a stress test/benchmark and a system tuning utility that allows control of voltages and ratios. This is something Realbench does not do.
 
Raja@ASUS said:
Realbench is just a stress test. Intel XTU is both a stress test/benchmark and a system tuning utility that allows control of voltages and ratios. This is something Realbench does not do.
Click to expand...

Ok thx Raja.
 
I love the the TUF motherboards. I want an extremely stable motherboard with the ability to OC as needed.

I'm still using a Z87 Sabertooth with a 4770K overclocked to 4.7GHz. I bought 1866MHz memory because that was the sweet spot for that setup at the time. I don't overclock the memory. I've run solid for 2.5 years without a single reboot...until a few days ago. I was playing Cities:Skylines and my PC rebooted. i think it was probably due to me running Windows 10 insider builds+not having the latest Nvidia drivers+C:S keeping my CPU above 80%(yes the game is that CPU intensive)+RDP into work+LR and a few other apps open. I haven't seen the problem since though. Other than that, extremely stable. I will certainly buy another TUF series whenever the next chipset comes out after the Z170.

Of course, Asus is the best mobo company IMHO. And Raja showing up all over is just icing on the cake :)
 
Can we get some feedback one the on-board sound? Is it on par with the Hero? What the major difference?
 
LiquidX said:
Can we get some feedback one the on-board sound? Is it on par with the Hero? What the major difference?
Click to expand...

I'd love to. Unfortunately I reviewed these motherboards quite far apart so I only have my notes and the review itself to go on. I remember being more impressed with the Hero's sound.

Raja@ASUS said:
The Hero uses an additional ESS DAC for the headphone/front outputs.
Click to expand...

Beat me to it. ;)
 
Yes i agree ASUS boards in general are of excellent quality and are one of the best. I just wish their customer service was the same too:(
 
I'm finally building my new system with this motherboard, and I noticed something:

1447055229VMOGurvDXp_1_17_l.jpg


You have that fan backwards in that photo. It's supposed to push air into the VRM area. ASUS's accessory guide (link goes to .pdf) for this motherboard says so: "Get the bundled 40 mm assistant fan and position it to an orientation where its THE ULTIMATE FORCE logo is facing towards the back I/O shield."
 
porkiescratchings said:
Yes i agree ASUS boards in general are of excellent quality and are one of the best. I just wish their customer service was the same too:(
Click to expand...

I've actually talked with ASUS about this and they are making an effort to improve on this. Unfortunately, it won't happen overnight. Even if they corrected every complaint tomorrow, their reputation will take substantially longer to improve. Keep in mind, they sell more motherboards than every other company out there save for GIGABYTE (which sold just slightly more motherboards last quarter), and this means that you're going to see more complaints about them than anyone else as their are physically more ASUS motherboards out there than anything else.
 
evilsofa said:
I'm finally building my new system with this motherboard, and I noticed something:

1447055229VMOGurvDXp_1_17_l.jpg


You have that fan backwards in that photo. It's supposed to push air into the VRM area. ASUS's accessory guide (link goes to .pdf) for this motherboard says so: "Get the bundled 40 mm assistant fan and position it to an orientation where its THE ULTIMATE FORCE logo is facing towards the back I/O shield."
Click to expand...


Noted. We got exceptional cooling with the setup we used. That said, I never read in the manual that it was supposed to be set up that way. I will double check next time.
 
It's not in the manual that comes in the box i believe, only in the accessory guide that you can download from the website, but yes it does denote to have the fan push air though it instead of pull air back. I suppose that's why in bios you set the fans to run in reverse for periods of time to "de_dust".
 
I found another weird thing! This time it's ASUS's fault.

In page 4 of your review, you were surprised that LAN1 (Intel i219v) was slower than LAN2 (Realtek RTL8111H), probably because Intel LAN is supposed to always be superior.

Well, page 2-13 of the manual says that item 4 (to the left) is the Intel LAN port, while item 5 (to the right, next to the audio jacks) is the Realtek LAN port. WRONG. The Intel LAN is on the right, the Realtek is to the left.

I know this because when I disabled the Realtek LAN driver in Device Manager after installing the Intel LAN driver, the Internet stopped working. When I moved the Ethernet wire to the other LAN port, the Internet started working again.
 
evilsofa said:
I found another weird thing! This time it's ASUS's fault.

In page 4 of your review, you were surprised that LAN1 (Intel i219v) was slower than LAN2 (Realtek RTL8111H), probably because Intel LAN is supposed to always be superior.

Well, page 2-13 of the manual says that item 4 (to the left) is the Intel LAN port, while item 5 (to the right, next to the audio jacks) is the Realtek LAN port. WRONG. The Intel LAN is on the right, the Realtek is to the left.

I know this because when I disabled the Realtek LAN driver in Device Manager after installing the Intel LAN driver, the Internet stopped working. When I moved the Ethernet wire to the other LAN port, the Internet started working again.
Click to expand...

Nope, I'm actually quite sure of which is which. The LAN adapters each show up with their driver / model names. I have to mess with this each time, as I set their IP's manually.
 
I've done some work on overclocking my 6700K with this motherboard. I despaired of trying to translate some Skylake overclocking guides because some of it I just didn't get, so I used kandor's settings from this thread. I very much appreciate him posting them or I would have been lost. The only setting I had to figure out is that to alter "Total adaptive mode CPU core voltage", you need to put the value in the "Additional Turbo Mode CPU Core Voltage" field.

I like those settings because they use Adaptive Mode for CPU core voltage, which lets the CPU idle at lower clocks rather than run at 4.5GHz the entire time. I ran into a few stumbling blocks on the way to getting this to work though.

1. In Windows' Power Plan settings, you need to go into the advanced power settings and drill down to Processor Power Management and set Minimum processor state to 5% (I've seen advice that PSUs might have trouble with less than that). At 4.5GHz, this results in the CPU idling at 800MHz, which is not 5% but I suppose there must be some good reason for that. If you have chosen the High Performance power plan, Minimum processor state will have been set to 100% and the CPU will not idle.

2. Once I'd done that, I saw crazypants behavior. The CPU was wobbling between 4500MHz and 800MHz about once per second. I finally noticed that in the Task Manager, atkexComSvc.exe was bouncing around anywhere from 1.6% to 4.0% of CPU time, repeatedly triggering the CPU in and out of idle state. This turned out to be the ASUS Com Service, which is part of ASUS AI Suite 3. You can disable this service with Run->Services.msc and setting ASUS Com Service to Disable in its properties; while disabling it completely disables ASUS AI Suite 3, that also allowed the CPU to idle properly.

I thought I'd needed ASUS AI Suite 3 for the Sabertooth Z170 because some of its fan controls can be found only there, but it seems as if all of those unique fan controls, even the reversal of the assistant fans to blow dust out and the fan ramp up and down times are in the UEFI BIOS. So I've removed AI Suite 3, because it's not worth losing the ability to idle, and definitely not worth the consumption of 4% of a 6700K's CPU time!

If you remove AI Suite 3 with ASUS's installer, the three services get left behind, so you'll want to run this Cleaner app that ASUS wrote. You'll need to run it in Safe Mode. And then you'll need to run CCleaner's Registry Cleaner to remove the invalid registry entries that make them still appear like ghosts in Services.msc and Task Manager.
 
evilsofa said:
I've done some work on overclocking my 6700K with this motherboard. I despaired of trying to translate some Skylake overclocking guides because some of it I just didn't get, so I used kandor's settings from this thread. I very much appreciate him posting them or I would have been lost. The only setting I had to figure out is that to alter "Total adaptive mode CPU core voltage", you need to put the value in the "Additional Turbo Mode CPU Core Voltage" field.

I like those settings because they use Adaptive Mode for CPU core voltage, which lets the CPU idle at lower clocks rather than run at 4.5GHz the entire time. I ran into a few stumbling blocks on the way to getting this to work though.

1. In Windows' Power Plan settings, you need to go into the advanced power settings and drill down to Processor Power Management and set Minimum processor state to 5% (I've seen advice that PSUs might have trouble with less than that). At 4.5GHz, this results in the CPU idling at 800MHz, which is not 5% but I suppose there must be some good reason for that. If you have chosen the High Performance power plan, Minimum processor state will have been set to 100% and the CPU will not idle.

2. Once I'd done that, I saw crazypants behavior. The CPU was wobbling between 4500MHz and 800MHz about once per second. I finally noticed that in the Task Manager, atkexComSvc.exe was bouncing around anywhere from 1.6% to 4.0% of CPU time, repeatedly triggering the CPU in and out of idle state. This turned out to be the ASUS Com Service, which is part of ASUS AI Suite 3. You can disable this service with Run->Services.msc and setting ASUS Com Service to Disable in its properties; while disabling it completely disables ASUS AI Suite 3, that also allowed the CPU to idle properly.

I thought I'd needed ASUS AI Suite 3 for the Sabertooth Z170 because some of its fan controls can be found only there, but it seems as if all of those unique fan controls, even the reversal of the assistant fans to blow dust out and the fan ramp up and down times are in the UEFI BIOS. So I've removed AI Suite 3, because it's not worth losing the ability to idle, and definitely not worth the consumption of 4% of a 6700K's CPU time!

If you remove AI Suite 3 with ASUS's installer, the three services get left behind, so you'll want to run this Cleaner app that ASUS wrote. You'll need to run it in Safe Mode. And then you'll need to run CCleaner's Registry Cleaner to remove the invalid registry entries that make them still appear like ghosts in Services.msc and Task Manager.
Click to expand...

signed up just to reply to this.

1) yeah the lan ports are diagrammed wrong in the manual ( side note, they updated the accessory manual since the fan diagram for the one by the io panel was pointing air flow in the wrong direction compared to their verbal directions)
2) I had the same issue with the ai suite clocking the cpu. I didn't know about the need to clean it if you needed to uninstall which makes me wonder if this applies to an issue I found with my 950 pro drive.

Without going into details, over the years I noticed that if you run process explorer and noticed "interrupts" running consistently over 1% ( or even over like .5%) there is an indication something is up with the low level hardware. You will see odd slowness in games etc that hard to quantify using normal methods. To my point, I built my new machine this week ( sabertooth, 6700k, sammy 950 pro, gskill 16x2 ddr4 3200). Before I started to load it up with every driver and asus app (including ai suite) I benched the ssd drive. Got the expected results. A few days later, after I started to "settle in" the system I ran another bench. The iops were terrible, about 3-4 times lower. Noticed "interrupts" hovering between 1-2%. At that point I started to uninstall and trim down bios features, etc. Nothing helped even though I got interrupts down somewhat. Called sammy support and the only suggestion they had other than RMA is to reinstall windows. So I did that and then benched it again. No issues. After that I slowly started to install components biased on priority, benching every time. At this point I plan to stay away from most of the asus OS tools and work in bios since I have a suspicion they may introduce the issue I saw. I do wonder if it would have went away if I ran that cleaner tool, but at this point I prefer to move on just keep an eye out for the issue.

I got the core stuff installed and I imaged the OS in case I need to backpedal. Now to start installing steam and peripheral stuff again.


One last thing. I can't boot at all using xmp settings. F4-3200C14D-32GTZ. I ended up under clocking it to below 3000 with xmp enabled. It's been years since I needed to play with over clocking so I am a bit rusty. Googling shows mixed results with z170 boards. Any advice would be appreciated. I pan to play with it more but didn't have time now due to this IOPS segway.
 
I never even tried using XMP settings before now. Honestly, I forgot about the RAM settings with everything else I have been doing. My 2800MHz Ripjaws V were running at 2133MHz, oops! So I tried XMP settings, which set the DRAM Frequency to 2133MHz, which is the same as the motherboard did at default with XMP disabled. I've read elsewhere to not even bother using XMP, so I went back to manual settings (had to re-enter CPU settings) so now my RAM is running at 2800MHz 1.2v as per specs. I reduced the timings from 16-16-16-35 to 15-15-15-35 and all seems well.
 
evilsofa said:
I like those settings because they use Adaptive Mode for CPU core voltage, which lets the CPU idle at lower clocks rather than run at 4.5GHz the entire time. I ran into a few stumbling blocks on the way to getting this to work though.

1. In Windows' Power Plan settings, you need to go into the advanced power settings and drill down to Processor Power Management and set Minimum processor state to 5% (I've seen advice that PSUs might have trouble with less than that). At 4.5GHz, this results in the CPU idling at 800MHz, which is not 5% but I suppose there must be some good reason for that. If you have chosen the High Performance power plan, Minimum processor state will have been set to 100% and the CPU will not idle.

2. Once I'd done that, I saw crazypants behavior. The CPU was wobbling between 4500MHz and 800MHz about once per second.
Click to expand...

I have now installed windows twice on this mobo with i7-6700k. The first time I installed the AI Suite and this time I have not yet and don't think I will, certainly not based on your info in this post.

I want to verify what to look out for in regards to the wobbling you mentioned or if I don't even have to worry about it since I haven't loaded that software? I have not fiddled with windows power management at all. When I open task manager and watch the processor info I see it frequently at 800MHz, in fact if idle it seems to stay there most of the time but occasionally jumps up high. Would I see the wobble here or do you need (I assume to be better) cpuid software to really notice it (CPU-Z and/or the HWM Monitor)?

Also, is monitoring the MHz all you need to monitor in regards to the CPU using power (why we're using adaptive in the first place right?) or should the CPU core voltage ever change? If running at 800MHz should the core voltage drop or will it stay at 1.332V (or whatever you're using) most or all of the time?
 
What I saw while the PC was just sitting idle with AI Suite installed, was that in CPU-Z the clock speed would go 800->4500->800->4500->800->4500, once per second, and in Task Manager, the process that originated from AI Suite was bumping CPU usage from less than 1% to 3%-4%, also every second, so it was the glaringly obvious culprit. Now, with AI Suite gone, after the first few minutes after a Windows boot or restart and WIndows is done loading in all its delayed start stuff, Windows is quite well behaved and stays below 1% until I make it do something.

For me, CPU-Z 1.75 tells me the core voltage is 0.736V while sitting at idle, and while stress-testing with x264 at 4500MHz, core voltage goes up to 1.328V most of the time, sometimes jumping to 1.344V.
 
evilsofa said:
What I saw while the PC was just sitting idle with AI Suite installed, was that in CPU-Z the clock speed would go 800->4500->800->4500->800->4500, once per second, and in Task Manager, the process that originated from AI Suite was bumping CPU usage from less than 1% to 3%-4%, also every second, so it was the glaringly obvious culprit. Now, with AI Suite gone, after the first few minutes after a Windows boot or restart and WIndows is done loading in all its delayed start stuff, Windows is quite well behaved and stays below 1% until I make it do something.

For me, CPU-Z 1.75 tells me the core voltage is 0.736V while sitting at idle, and while stress-testing with x264 at 4500MHz, core voltage goes up to 1.328V most of the time, sometimes jumping to 1.344V.
Click to expand...

That's what I was hoping you'd say. Thanks for replying. I've read your posts and I don't think you specifically noted it, is both your CPU voltage and the additional turbo voltage both at 1.35V? I only ask in case it is lower than that and wanted to know if the adaptive is truly letting the voltage go over the number you set, or if it really lets the voltage "self regulate" but only up to a certain voltage. One forum I read said to set the Additional Turbo 0.1 or 0.2V more than the CPU voltage "to allow for some room." Does that make sense?
 
When "CPU Core/Cache Voltage" is set to Adaptive, it seems like I don't choose its voltage, it just says 1.168V next to Adaptive Mode and I don't know how it decides that will be the core voltage. Following kandor's settings, I set "Offset Mode Sign" is set to +, "Additional Turbo Mode CPU Core Voltage" to 1.332 and "Offset Voltage" to Auto. I see that this is effectively accomplishing the advice you read, that Additional Turbo is set to 0.164V above CPU Core/Cache voltage.
 
quick thing, I contacted asus. They now updated the manual to reflect the correct location of the intel lan port.
 
I have what may be a dumb question about this board. Actually it's not specifically about this board but it applies especially to this board because of the advanced level of fan auto-configuration it has for thermal control even compared to other ASUS boards. If I've got a liquid cooler like the Arctic models where the fan control is strictly through the motherboard instead of separate software, how do I configure the fan in AI Suite? From what I can see on Asus' website, this board as more sophisticated auto-profiling based on your fan setup. But if your CPU fan is also your rear fan, for example, which do you set it as to get optimal results? Granted from the reviews on here, the Liquid Freezer coolers can pretty much be left at max fan speed without any noise issues but still, this question got me thinking :)
 
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