| ASUS Sabertooth P67 B3 TUF Motherboard |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Motherboards | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Written by Hank Tolman | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 02 May 2011 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ASUS Sabertooth P67 B3 Motherboard
Manufacturer: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by ASUS. The Sandy Bridge B3 revision motherboards are out and ready to go. ASUS has already re-released all of their previous motherboards under the new revision. You've seen our reviews of other ASUS P67 motherboards, and Benchmark Reviews is now bringing you a look at the ASUS Sabertooth P67 B3 Rev 3.0 motherboard with its TUF Thermal Armor and military grade components. We have a good idea where the benchmark scores will fall, and we don't expect any surprises there. But every motherboard is a little different. In this article, Benchmark Reviews is focusing on the ASUS Sabertooth P67, what it brings to the table, and how that compares with other P67-Express motherboards. The Sandy Bridge platform has had a pretty tumultuous run since the B2 stepping was recalled due to issues with the SATA 3Gb/s ports. The delays have caused untold misery to manufacturers who basically had to throw out their previous designs and eat the costs of building all that hardware. Now we have moved on to revision 3.0, also known as B3 stepping. With rev 3.0, the issues were fixed, and manufacturers have begun replacing affected hardware and shipping out the new stuff. ASUS has remained customer service minded, offering potential refunds or replacements for affected hardware and being among the first to offer rev 3.0 hardware for the Intel 6 series. ASUS is bringing a lot of change to the existing norm with their P67-Express chipset motherboards, not the least of which is the EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) with Graphical User Interface included with all of their P67 motherboards. That's not all, however. The following are a few things ASUS has added to the Sabertooth P67 motherboard that we will explore further along in this article. Some of these technologies are new and others have been used before.
All motherboard manufacturers realize that the key to making their product stand out from the crowd of nearly identical motherboards is to add their own features. While some are common-place, like USB 3.0 ports that Intel oddly left of the P67-Express chipset, others are rare. Some are seemingly cosmetic or serve a little used function. Whatever the case may be, all motherboards, even those from the same manufacturer, vary somewhat in their feature sets. Below is a table that outlines some of the ASUS P67 motherboards so you can compare their features with those of the ASUS Sabertooth P67 motherboard.
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Comments
It seems like they could have easily saved a good bit of money not adding it to the motherboard. Additionally, I agree with ChrisH, that the "plastic divider" will act more as a thermal insulator, and drive component temps up. Luckily Sandy Bridge has a low thermal load.
The one thing that I do like about TUF armor, is that it might serve to protect the motherboard against small objects that could accidentally fall on it.
The in-depth review was greatly appreciated.
As far as the Military Grade components, the reason they are limited to a few boards, I believe, is due to the cost inherent in using those components. ASUS still has to offer low-end motherboards and even higher-end motherboards at competitive prices. If they maintained all the features of those boards and used the higher grade components, the costs would be quite a bit higher.
Besides, even with the 25% better quality and longer life-span, nearly any motherboard made by the major manufacturers will long outlast it's usefulness to you.
-Hank
However, before I can go playing with all the latest & greatest features, I am stuck with my Sabertooth's waking up from sleep problem. Which is a common problem among many users and there is an extensive discussion on the matter at vip asus forum. Even inconclusive, the current Sabertooth board has compatibility issue with many models of power supply. Thus after into sleep mode, the system can no longer wake up.
I just wonder that if you have the time and resources to try Sabertooth + i7-2600k with different PSUs to see if the bug exists on your board. FYI, I have 10 fans in total, 5 case fans, 2 cpu fans, 2 vga fans, and 1 assistant fan. If I move the power source of all five case fans and one cpu fan to a seperate power supply, the wakeup works, but not stable. If pc sleeps too long (few hours), it won't wakeup.
I've heard those options prevent system from recovering after sleep.
Unfortunately, I don't have the time or PSUs to try the different combinations. Also, I don't use the sleep function. Ever. So I haven't experienced this problem. That being said, I will certainly look into the issue and even try it out. If I find out anything that helps I will post back here.
Thanks!
Hank
It's too bad that Asus doesn't provide the needed fan and instructions. In another forum they indicated that they don't include the fan since they they can't warrant electromechanical stuff for as long as the mobo itself. But without the fan exhausting air, the armor makes no sense.
I also fault Asus support for not knowing or explaining how the armor is designed to be used. Blowing hot air down into it would clearly be ridiculous. I'm sure that whoever championed the armor idea back in the design groups is chagrined at how it has worked out when finally named, logo'd, stickered, sold, and supported.
Multi-GPU Support: Supports NVIDIAŽ Quad-GPU SLI? Technology
##asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/SABERTOOTH_P67/#specifications
on the Assist fan, its location is poor, it tends to block the top pci-e slot. Asus recomends a 50mmx50mmx10mm fan for this assist slot, a fan of that size is nearly useless, and is very noisy, if you get a 15mm thick fan or a 20mm thick fan it will be much better and quieter. the problem is this, the screws are two short for the 20mm fan, so you will need longer screws, Asus does not identify the thread pitch so you don't know what size screws to buy, The ability to control the assist fan speed is limited, and not mentioned in the manual at all.
The manual sucks big time, the pictures and line drawings are so small you can not even read it without a powerful magnafier. It leaves out critical info.The fan connector picture identify the pins with different anacronyms and does not explain what those mean. The 3 pin fan is id as gnd, 12v, and rotation, (define rotation), the 4 pin fan headers are id as gnd, cpu fan pwr, cpu fan in, cpu fan pwm, (define, fan pwr, and cpu fan in) well as I said the manual sucks.
There is a Green 20 pin connector thats supposed to provided for the front usb 3.0 ports, this cable is not provided, and I have no Idea where to get it, Asus doesn't seem to know. The Asus user forum is not monitored relying on mystified users to supply all help to users. Scan this forum to see a real review of this product. Severe Bios issues, Severe temp issues, Wake on lan issues, RMA issues. BBB has given Asus an F rating for failure to respond to complaints. I own one, I would not recommend this company or product. When the forum is filled with questions about overclocking, things are good, when its filled by complaints of RMA and feature that don't work, things are bad, don't accept my word for it, read the forums for yourself