ASUS’ armoured line of motherboards, AKA The Ultimate Force (TUF), started off as a weird idea that quickly took grasp of reality and became a proper product range that properly works. The TUF line of motherboards uses a shroud/armour like protection that works to keep the motherboard’s temperature under control as well as provide additional protection for the sensitive electronics. This allows for a lot of overclocking potential as the mainboard will remain stable even under high-power loads. As weird as it is, it works and works well. The TUF board is one of the most highly sought for top-level overclockers that have plans for massive clock speed boost projects.

Snow White

The ASUS Sabertooth Z97 Mark S is a limited edition, white camo painted TUF armoured motherboard. First introduced at Computex Taiwan last year, it had been initially named ‘Sabranco’,a combination of Saber and ‘Branco’ (Portugese for white). Due to its striking colour scheme, it had a lot of visitors wanting to get their hands on it. Hence the limited edition production model offering that ASUS came up with.

White Rose

As for the motherboard itself, the ASUS Sabertooth Z97 Mark S also comes in a pure white colour scheme. Sitting in the not so big box doesn’t mean it’s a lightweight. On the contrary, the package is really heavy. While most of the heft comes from the motherboard, some of it are due to the variety of extra parts that ASUS has included with this limited edition system. As with other members of the TUF, all, and I mean ALL openings – from the PCI-e slot, RAM clips, and even the USB jumper headers are given some kind of protective enclosure to make sure that no dust would go in. Hence you’ll find a bag containing all of these enclosed plastic plugs. Also included are SLi ribbons, SATA cables, an I/O backplate, driver DVD, as well as two small fans.

Snow Armour

Design wise, the motherboard is one fine looking specimen. While you’re likely to think that ASUS had just put a white TUF armour on a normal board, then you are wrong. The PCB is also totally white, something that you rarely see. Since 90% of the PCB has TUF armour protection, you won’t even notice the cool colour scheme unless you intend to look at it. It’s a nice touch by ASUS as it gives this limited edition motherboard a more premium feel to it. At the top left corner, you will find the limited edition serial number for this powered system offering.

Stone Cold! Stone Cold! Stone Cold!

On the middle and top left of the shroud, you will find a square piece that can be unscrewed. This armour piece can be taken out and you can put the included fans in – for better cooling performance. You can also better manage the flow of the air with two vent controls on the motherboard. Having

the shroud armour means the motherboard is expected to be heavier, thus a totally white aluminium backplate has been attached to the rear to make sure the PCB won’t bend or flex under its own weight. Also since the white camo looks like a white tiger, the kanji ‘Tiger Spirit’ in Chinese is etched on the back. While it can’t be seen once the motherboard has been installed in your casing, it’s still one cool looking piece of design.

White Fang

This motherboard is certainly is an OCD fantasy. Using ASUS’ Thermal Radar 2, you can check the temperature for each and every part of the board, including the individual slots! From here also youcan manage your fans – and you guessed it, each and every individual fan can be managed to be as

slow or fast as you like. Don’t feel like doing all this tedious stuff? Don’t worry! The board comes with a TUF ICe microchip that would do the job for

you. It will monitor and control the temperature intelligently and make sure your motherboard is at the optimum temperature. This, combined with

Japanese made metallic capacitors and new alloy chokes, means the limited edition white-camoASUS Z97 should last a for a pretty long time, even

with overclocking.

Never Let It Go

As the name suggest, the ASUS Z97 Sabertooth Mark S is based off the new Intel Z97 chipset. This means it will accept any LGA1150 Haswell processor

from Intel. Note that due to the rather large Thermal Armor, you might have trouble using third-party fan coolers for your processor. It’s recommended for you to use water cooling as the pump head is usually much smaller and should fit easier. On the right of the CPU socket, four banks of DDR3 RAM slots can be found – with both pairs being able to support dual channel RAM at a max count of 32GB on 1333MHz.

Sub Zero

At the rear, two Gigabit Ethernet ports are included as well as four USB 2.0 slots and four high-speed USB 3.0 ports. If you’re looking to use the onboard

Intel HD graphics, a HDMI and Display Port output is also included. Should you want something more powerful though, the three PCI-e 16x graphic ports supports either two way SLi or three way Crossfire for maximum gaming performance. Interestingly there is no M.2 SATA connector included, eventhough the Z97 system provides native support. The decision not to include the connector might be due to the fact that it would be hard touse with all the armour onboard.

White Hot

So how did the motherboard perform? Way beyond my expectations! The thermal armour does its job well, as all ASUS TUF has done. It might be the

new design or the white colour – perhaps both, but I feel that it performs better than the old TUF entries that I tested before. Overclocking can be done either from the BIOS or using ASUS’ software directly in Windows. Either way, it’s very straightforward, though you do need to have a basic idea on what you’re doing. Performance wise, this is one of the best Z97 motherboards that I had the opportunity to review and knowing what ASUS has done to it, the whole experience shouldn’t be a surprise. Above all, I loved it because it looks absolutely freaking cool. The white motherboard, when placed inside a black casing, looks contrasting but is certainly not out of place. I’d honestly buy the motherboard just for the visual awesomeness alone.