Asus P8Z68-V LX review

Asus motherboards are usually overflowing with features, and the P8Z68-V LX is no exception. Despite only costing £77, it has plenty of expansion and overclocking options that should appeal to a wide range of system builders.

As well as four memory lanes capable of holding 32GB of DDR3 RAM, the P8Z68-V has two PCI-Express x16 slots, two PCI-Express x1 slots and three PCI slots. If you use two graphics cards then the second PCI-E x16 lane will only run in x4 mode, which may hamper performance on high-end GPUs. A dual-slot graphics card will also obstruct the second PCI-E x1 slot.

Owners of multiple hard disks will appreciate the four internal SATA ports, and SSD users can get maximum performance from the two SATA3 ports. We would have liked at least one USB3 header on the motherboard, but the four standard USB headers are very useful.

The rear I/O panel is incredibly comprehensive, being comprised of four USB ports, two faster USB3 ports, a digital optical audio output and six analogue 3.5mm jacks, plus Gigabit Ethernet and a single PS/2 port for older keyboards. There’s also the choice of VGA, DVI or HDMI outputs if you’re planning on using your processor’s integrated graphics.

The P8Z68-V is also one of the least expensive boards we’ve seen to use a UEFI BIOS. It has plenty of options to overclock the processor, memory and even the integrated GPU, so you should have no trouble squeezing some extra performance from your components.

For such a well-priced motherboard, we were surprised that Asus has managed to add so many features to the P8Z68-V. We would have liked a few more USB3 ports or headers, but in terms of value for money there’s nothing out there that we’d recommend instead.