While a nice layout, cool colors and a good feature set listed on the box might be nice performance is what most people are looking for in a motherboard. A good feature set does not matter so much if the board is not able to perform to the level you want it to. For the most part Asus has done a good job in balancing out their features and performance. This balance has extended even down to their entry level boards as they trickle down what they learn from their Republic of Gamer’s Boards. So where does the Z97-A fit into all of this? Let’s find out.
Value -Value is another very subjective topic. What is expensive to some might be a deal to others. You can look at this topic in multiple ways. One is raw price and the other is what you get for the money. Each is accurate and both are correct ways to look at price/value. We tend to look at features, performance and real-property when we discuss value. However, we also take into account the raw cash cost of the item. At $140-145 at most online stores the Z97-A is priced fairly well considering what you get. There are a few things that Asus should have done though. For starters on a board priced at this level the M.2 port should have been SATA and not PCIe. Although this is a nice feature and one that will get you very good performance most people looking at this level of board are not going to pay the extra to get a PCIe SSD. Still for under $150 you just cannot go wrong.
Conclusion -As we mentioned the Asus Z97-A is a good board with the right hardware dropped in. You can get some very solid overclocking out of it as well as good gaming performance. The Z97-A would also fit well in an entry level system considering its price. We are a little bit disappointed with the overall performance of the Z97 chipset at this time. We cannot be sure that this is an Asus specific issue though until we run a few more board through our tests. Overall, if you are looking to upgrade to a Z97 board and do not want to spend a fortune the Z97-A from Asus is a good choice. This might be a good board if you also want to build a board for use with an M.2 PCIe SSD. The lower cost of the board could offset the cost of the PCIe SSD. You have quite a few choices when you look at the Z97-A.Tell us what you think in our Forum
