Asus P8Z77-V Premium review

The Asus cache program also worked fine with a mechanical hard disk and an SSD plugged into the Marvell SATA ports. We couldn’t understand how to work the application at first, but once we’d deleted the cache that the program had automatically set up and re-enabled it, caching worked perfectly.

This board really is packed with features. On the rear you have two USB2 and four USB3 ports, as well as a couple of eSATA and Thunderbolt ports. There are 7.1 analogue surround sound outputs and an optical S/PDIF output, two Gigabit Ethernet ports and HDMI and DisplayPort graphics outputs. The motherboard comes with a box to fit in your 3 1/2in drive bay which has a couple of USB3 ports, and there’s also a Wi-Fi module and antenna.

You have plenty of expansion options, too, thanks to two SATA3 and two SATA2 ports on the Intel controller and four SATA3 ports on the Marvell storage chip. There are four PCI Express x16 slots and the board supports four-way SLI or CrossFire. There are also a couple of PCI Express x1 slots. When fitted with an Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K processor, we saw an overall score of 115 in our benchmarks, which is what we expect from this chipset and processor.

Asus’s P8Z77-V Premium is a top-specification Ivy Bridge motherboard with every feature you could possibly need. For most people, though, it will be overkill. The SSD caching function works on any motherboard with an Intel Z77 chipset, so if you’re willing to find somewhere to mount a separate SSD you’ll still able to take advantage of the chipset’s caching functions. If you’re desperate for Thunderbolt’s high speeds, this is the only motherboard that currently has the port, but the vast majority of people will be fine with USB3. Nonetheless, if you want the most feature-packed Intel motherboard there is, the P8Z77-V Premium is the model to have.