With a price that’s close to £200 inc VAT, there are certainly cheaper options than Asus’ Sabertooth Z170 TUF board if you’re looking to jump on the Skylake bandwagon. However, few boards offer anywhere near its number of features.
Let’s start with Asus’ Thermal Armor, which the company claims improves cooling by directing airflow from a couple of tiny included fans onto the PCB. We’ve always been in two minds about the Thermal Armor – you need to use the fans to keep your system cool and they can sound whiny – if you don’t use the fans, a huge area of the PCB is essentially blocked off from your case’s airflow. Also, it can get in the way. For instance, the top left-hand corner of the CPU socket area is very cramped and installing coolers is tricky as a result. Oddly, there are also vents that can be opened and closed, although it’s unclear why you’d want them closed.
However, the Thermal Armor does have a plus side – it looks fantastic. If you’re into modding, you can easily remove it to spray-paint it to match your case or other hardware. Asus has also included a complete set of blanking covers for the PCI-E slots, DIMM slots and rear I/O ports. These covers are meant to keep out dust but, when combined with the Thermal Armor, they give it a decidedly stealth bomber-like look. The rear of the motherboard sports a large steel plate too, which Asus claims prevents the PCB from bowing under stress and also aids cooling.
The accessories list doesn’t stop there, though, as Asus has included a PCI-E-to-M.2 adaptor, which can house up to 110mm SSDs, in addition to the 110mm-long slot on the motherboard itself. The latter, though, is sealed in a small chamber in the Thermal Armor and while we didn’t see any speed drop-offs during testing, our SSD did get a tad warm in that location. As such, it’s good that there’s another way of mounting an M.2 SSD. There are two SATA Express ports and eight SATA 6Gbps ports too, although two of the latter come courtesy of an ASMedia controller, so make sure any SSDs are hooked up to the faster Intelcontrolled ports instead.
Meanwhile, the rear I/O panel is bristling with ports, including a pair of Intel Gigabit Ethernet ports, plus both USB 3.1 Type-A and reversible Type-C ports too. There’s a notable lack of overclocking and testing tools here and on the PCB though – there are no buttons or LED displays, and just a jumper for resetting the CMOS. These features have always been missing from TUF motherboards, and it’s a shame.
Layout is otherwise generally good. You get three 16x PCI-E slots and three 1x PCI-E slots, and one of the latter sits above the top 16x slot, so you’ll be able to use a discrete sound card or the included M.2 adaptor no matter how many graphics cards you use. The first two 16x slots are also double-spaced, so air-cooled cards won’t be cramped.
The main feature of TUF motherboards that justifies their price, however, is the software and fan control. There are six 4-pin fan headers on the PCB and all of them can be automatically controlled using the included Thermal Radar 2 software. This suite enables you to tweak each of the fan profile curves and even switch off fans below certain CPU temperatures if you’re just browsing the Web. You can also set each fan to provide post-shutdown cooling. The headers work with 4-pin or 3-pin fans too – the latter’s fan speed can be adjusted and not just fixed. You can also reduce the speed of the small chipset fans to reduce the aforementioned whiny sound.
In addition, the Sabertooth Z170 also has three thermal sensors that you can connect to headers on the motherboard, so you can monitor the temperatures of your other hardware or even coolant using a thermal probe. In short, it’s a tweaker’s dream.
Performance
At stock speed, the Sabertooth Z180’s system score of 129,358 in our RealBench 2015 suite wasn’t exceptional, sitting behind MSI’s Z170A Xpower Gaming TE and Asus’ Maximus VIII Ranger. On the plus side, the audio performance of -104.3dBA and 104.2dBA for noise and dynamic range respectively in RightMark was typical of Asus’ Z170 line-up, with only the Maximus VIII Impact offering superior sound. Storage performance was right on the money too.
Thankfully, the Sabertooth Z170 is a great overclocker. Using its excellent, easy-to-use EFI, we pushed our Core i7-6700K up to 4.8GHz with a 1.34V vcore, and its system score of 151,774 was then much more competitive too. Power consumption was the Sabertooth Z170’s trump card, though, with our system drawing just 56W when overclocked at idle, and peaking at 180W under load.
Conclusion
The Sabertooth Z170 is a pricey Skylake board, but the extra features (and extended warranty) will definitely appeal to anyone that likes tinkering with their PC. There are a few issues to be aware of, such as the noisy chipset fans, slightly cramped CPU socket area and mediocre stock-speed performance, but on the whole it’s a good-looking, wellfeatured motherboard that justifies its asking price. ANTONY LEATHER
VERDICT
Feature-packed, good-looking and bursting with tweakable features and accessories, although you pay a premium for the privilege.
SPECIFICATIONS
Chipset Intel Z170
CPU socket Intel LGA1151
Memory support 4 slots: max 64GB DDR3 (up to 3733MHz)
Expansion slots Three 16x PCI-E 3, three 1x PCI-E 3
Sound Realtek ALC1150
Networking Two Intel Gigabit LAN
Overclocking Base clock 40–650MHz, CPU multiplier 8-83x; max voltages, CPU 1.7V, RAM 2V
Ports 6 x SATA 6Gbps (Z170), 2 x SATA 6Gbps (ASMedia), 2 x SATA Express, 2 x M.2, 6 x USB 3, 5 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 5 x USB 2, 2 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out, line in, mic, 1 x HDMI 1.4, 1 x DisplayPort 1.2
Dimensions (mm) 305 x 244