ASUS Sabertooth Z97 Mark S Limited Edition Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts
Obviously the big selling point of this motherboard is its color and rightfully so, it is not very often we see an all-white motherboard. ASUS has made the TUF Thermal Armor and TUF Fortifier on this motherboard arctic camo themed. Beyond that the entire PCB of the motherboard is white, which just looks amazing! I’m not even sure our photos do the motherboard justice! It is one of the nicest looking boards we have seen in a long time!

ASUS didn’t just pick any motherboard to make white they went with the Sabertooth Z97 motherboard which is packed with a ton of features other motherboards just don’t have! Again you have the Thermal Armor which not only looks cool, but keeps dust out of unused ports. You have the ability to install two fans on the thermal armor to keep things even cooler. You have the TUF Fortifier that adds a layer of protection to the back of the motherboard and acts as a heatsink. The board has an all-digital power design with TUF MOSFETs, TUF alloy chokes, and 10K Ti-Caps. The TUF ESD guards ensure electrostatic discharges are properly grounded from all onboard connectivity. ASUS’s TUF line is known for its durability and each motherboard goes through rigorous tests before it is ready to ship to you. You even get a certificate of reliability showing you what all tests were performed on the board. ASUS stands behind their motherboards and backs this one with a 5-year warranty.

Not only do you get a great hardware package, but ASUS has one of the best UEFI BIOS’s that I have seen. The EZ Mode has everything you need to quickly change like boot devices and XMP profile, but once you go into Advanced Mode you have quite a lot of options to fully customize your system. The BIOS also has some cool features like the My Favorites menu, a notepad, and it shows you all of the changes you made before you save your settings. Of course ASUS is known for their Ai Suite software and they should be. It is some of the best motherboard companion software that I have used. The big focus with this board is the Thermal Radar 2 software that allows you to fully optimize the cooling in your system. This is great because every system layout is different and you can set it up to work optimally for yours.

Overclocking on this board is easy enough with the EZ Tuning Wizard that is in the BIOS. It gave us a decent overclock, but of course we knew we could do better with manual overclocking. I was able to bring my Intel Core i7-4790K from 4.0 GHz to 4.6 GHz, which seems to be the wall with my current setup. Still not bad for a fully-stable overclock.

Now there are some things on this motherboard that are missing if I were to nitpick. First there is no M.2 slot or WiFi. It would have also been nice to have power and reset buttons on the board along with a POST code display. Maybe I’ve just become accustomed to those things.

Right now the Sabertooth Z97 Mark S is selling for $269.99 at my favorite online retailer. That is a $30 premium over the Sabertooth Z97 Mark 1. So for the extra $30 you are getting the white PCB, and arctic camo TUF Thermal Armor and Fortifier. Not bad really, and keep in mind this is a limited edition motherboard so once they are gone they really are gone!

Overall ThinkComputers gives the ASUS Sabertooth Z97 Mark S a 9 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!

rating9 10 small TC award recommended small

Pros:
– White PCB!
– Arctic Camo TUF Armor and TUF Fortifier
– TUF Exclusive features
– Excellent BIOS
– Good for overclocking
– Ai Suite III software

Cons:
– No M.2 slot or WiFi
– No power / reset buttons on the board

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