 The BitFenix Prodigy M is compact and ready for anything. Click now to learn more. Welcome to my unboxing and overview of the Z87i Deluxe, which is a product that I'd be more excited about if Asus hadn't unleashed the Maximus 6 Impact on us with this generation of products. So that's an ROG-grade MITX board. This one is still very fully featured, but in some slightly different ways. So unlike the last generation product, it's got six SATA ports. Unlike the last generation product, it's got support for Ultra HD 4K output. However, if you are running some kind of a 4K display setup, I would really recommend grabbing a dedicated graphics card. Unlike the ROG board, it has onboard wireless AC, which is actually pretty darn cool. But I guess, I mean, okay, that's already enough differences that the board justifies its existence somewhat. It has a very, very high-end VRM solution, just like the last generation Z77i Deluxe board. So you can see that, like all of their super premium ITX boards, it has a riser, like a daughter PCB, with a heatsink all over the front of it, a heatsink all over the back of it, and VRM componentry built onto it, because there just wasn't enough room to put all of that Uber stuff onto one of these boards. It has their four-way optimization, which is a little bit different from how they implement things on the ROG boards. So that means that it can optimize for running faster, it can optimize for saving power when you're away, and it can even do things like you can set a maximum power consumption for the CPU itself that it cannot exceed through the AiSuite software, which is, again, incredibly cool. So let's take you on a bit of a tour of the board. Up here in the top right is the 8-pin CPU power connector. Next is the 24-pin power connector. It's hard to really say what the optimal locations are for things like this on an ITX board, because the chassis really do vary a fair bit. There's six, say, the three 6-gigabit-per-second ports, as I mentioned before, and you'll notice the spacing. This gives you quite a bit more flexibility in terms of where you're plugging them in, because again, with that variation in the layouts of MITX cases, you don't always have a guarantee as to where you're actually going to be able to reach the SATA ports. Full support for dual-channel DDR3 memory, so you can easily plug in up to 16 gigs. And check this out, I really like this. They have changed the way that the PCI Express slot latch is accessed. So that's a full-speed PCIe 3.0 16x slot, and you can access it from this side or this side, which again is very tailored to the challenges that people face when building these little tiny systems. Fan expert 2 has been added to the board, which means full control, whether you're running 3-pin or 4-pin fans using the AI Suite software, and the fan headers are here, here, here, and here. So they're all in pretty much the same spot. ASUS has their patent-pending sensing connector as well for the CPU, so that it can automatically apply the right control profile. It is an LGA 1150 board. You've got support for the latest Haswell processors. And as we move around to the back, we find a pretty darn complete I.O. So four USB 2.0 ports, six USB 3.0 ports. That's more than the Impacts, which has a sort of a bit of a different loadout, if you will. It has a BIOS, a clear CMOS switch, as well as a BIOS flashback switch. So if you brick the board in the middle of flashing the BIOS, you can restore it that way. Dual-link DVI, DisplayPort, and HDMI, optical audio out. Intel-powered gigabit ethernet, as well as wireless AC and Bluetooth 4.0. And this is the thing that is really, to me, the key difference between the Impact and the Deluxe. So it has onboard 5.1 audio. However, you're only going to be able to run 5.1 audio that can be reconfigured to 5.1 because normally you'd have your line out, your mic, and your headphone out, or speakers out, and that's kind of it. Whereas the Impact has a very premium audio solution built into it. This one has a sort of a ho-hum audio solution. But it brings that wireless to the table, as well as the extra SATA ports. If you were to build a really high-end storage server or something like that that you want to put away in a closet, you want to trust it, that it's going to be super reliable, so you still want something really high-end, this would work for that. So it's just about the different use case scenarios. Oh yeah, I probably should have mentioned there's a USB 3.0 header right here in kind of the middle of the board. Not a very optimal location for that. Would have preferred it at the edge. And that leads us to the accessories, which I sort of tore out in my hurry to check out the board itself. Six SATA cables, and by six I mean five. That's very odd. There's only one in this package. I kind of wonder if that's actually just... Oh, there's another one that's individually wrapped as well. So six SATA cables, as well as the magnetic antenna for the onboard wireless connectivity. So there you go. You can sort of stick it down flat. You can fold it up like this, and then stick it to something else like that. It'll stick to anything that's got some iron or nickel content in it. I.O. shield, as well as your manual with the driver disc, and this. It's actually... I don't know, this might sound kind of crazy, but this is one of the cleverest innovations that I think ASUS brought to the table with their latest generation ITX boards. This is instead of the older style Q connector, which is like a little brick that plugs into the board. And check this out. It's a pre-done smaller brick that is a breakout cable. Kind of actually having to plug the individual things from the case into the top of the connector itself. So you take this whole thing, it's keyed so you can only install it one way. You plug that in, then you can run it wherever it needs to go and plug all your front panel power switch, reset switch, and all your LEDs into that instead, which I think is actually really, really cool. So thank you for checking out my unboxing and overview of the Z87i Deluxe. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech to get more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos. If you liked it, dislike it, if you disliked it, and leave a comment if you think my teeth are just too yellow and I should just stop making YouTube videos because I'm disgusting.