ASUS Z97I-PLUS mini-ITX Motherboard Review

After that in-depth look at the board hardware, EFI, software, and performance, chances are good that you now know whether or not ASUS’ Z97I-PLUS is for you. If not, let’s take the time to talk about a couple of things that I didn’t cover earlier, or didn’t cover in much depth.

A highlighted feature of ASUS’ Z97 lineup is “5X Protection”, which is an umbrella term for five separate technologies that help keep your gear safe. At the top is a digital VRM, or as ASUS likes to call it, “DIGI+ VRM”. VRMs are essential in the recipe for efficient power, and so it’s no surprise that ASUS prides itself on its robust digital design. Beyond that, the company also bundles in DRAM overcurrent protection, 5K solid capacitors, a stainless steel I/O backplate (this is the first time I’ve ever seen a backplate come into consideration where hardware protection is concerned), as well as ESD guards laced around the board to prevent you passing along a shock and killing board components.

Cloud services – everybody’s got one, including ASUS. Its implementation is called HomeCloud, and it’s designed to be easy-to-use, and of course offer a lot of features anyone might be looking for. Paired with Wi-Fi Go!, you could control a PC remotely, manage cloud data, and stream music/photos/et cetera. Admittedly, I didn’t test HomeCloud on account of having a horrid Internet connection, but judging by the four-star rating of the app at the Google Play store, its design looks to be solid.

After spending a lot of time with this board, I’ve come to love it, and would recommend it to anyone needing an ITX option that’s packed to the gills with features, most notably including Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. If you don’t need wireless functionality, and don’t mind losing a couple of other minor things (all covered on the first page of this review), the H97I-PLUS would be worth investigating.

Having installed a different vendor’s ITX board after this one, there are a couple of things that now stand out to me about this one that I’d consider important. For starters, most of the ports are just where I’d want them to be – especially the SATA. The fan headers might be a little rough to reach in some cases, but trade-offs have to be made when the board is so small. One area where ASUS really made installation easier for me was with the chassis connectors – the included extender is something I feel all smaller motherboards should include. Without it, installing the board into certain large chassis just might not happen.

Other notable things about this board includes the intuitive EFI, the feature-rich AiSuite III, an M.2 slot on the back (for mini-SSDs), more intelligent auto fan-tuning / auto overclocking versus last-gen, and for what it’s worth, USB 3.0 Boost to help improve external storage performance.

Simply put, ASUS’ Z97I-PLUS is small, but it’s mighty. Proof of that might come with the fact that I just wrote some 4,000 words to talk about it. If I had an ITX build in my future, I’d be packing this one in without hesitation. For gaming, such as for a LAN box, I’d probably consider targeted options, such as ASUS’ own upcoming Maximus VII Impact. But that’s mostly only because of its showoff-worthy design, and other gamer-specific features. For all other uses, the Z97I-PLUS is simply stellar.

ASUS Z97I-PLUS