ASUS TUF Sabertooth Z77 Motherboard is a Dark Knight in Thermal Armour
 

ASUS hasn't completely ditched the "Thermal Armour" concept it introduced with the TUF Sabertooth P67, which we thought it did away, with the Sabertooth X79. The newest member in the series, the Sabertooth Z77, still very much features it. Thermal Armour is ASUS' idea of blanketing most of the motherboard's component area with a perforated sheet that directs air-flow, and also lends it an aesthetic touch (depending on your taste, you may love it, or hate it).

We spy four DDR3-DIMM slots (with matching Corsair Vengeance modules, not included), and an all-PCIe expansion slot layout, with two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, one PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4), and three PCIe x1. There are two additional SATA 6 Gb/s ports augmented to the ones provided by the Z77 PCH. Display connectivity looks to include DVI and HDMI. 8-channel HD audio, GbE, about 6 USB 3.0 ports, and a number of USB 2.0 ports, complete the package. The board supports ASUS' BIOS Flashback feature. ASUS TUF Sabertooth motherboards are designed to be rock-stable and durable enough to be certified by stress-testing agencies for it.

http://www.techpowerup.com/img/12-03-06/66a_thm.jpg

Source: Lab501.ro

How effective is the 'thermal armour'?
I thought we would not see this feature after the P67-Sabertooth (there is no Z68-Sabertooth) http://promos.asus.com/us/sabertooth_P67/

'thermal radar' however is a neat feature, i feel..

Worse board temps when you have it on, but have no active cooling on the board itself.

My board never gets over 35C tho I do use the 50mm fan option because my CPU is on water. The Thermal Radar is pretty neat I have never had so many sensors to get temps from.

This thing looks so freaking awesome, that might be the board for me :)

Sabertooth is so hideous.

I other the other hand think it is great. I personally prefer it's tidy looks. Don't really need to see all the electronic bits and pieces.

It is a love or hate it board.

So called thermal radar. It was almost a fail on the P67 variant with us have to modify the armor itself to get proper cooling.

I like my own, i had a 50mm fan that i had to remove because it started to whine to loud for my taste though...
Temps are good, but usb3 chip heats more than anything else...

epic, if they put this out in an am3+ board I will buy for sure!

The 990FX Sabertooth is such a nice board. Great layout and colour, and heatskink design.
+1 for not liking this design of covering the motherboard up.

I think it looks nice and clean.

More pics of the Z77 Sabertooth:

board shown with 2 fans(only one visible bleow cpu area)
Attachment 46062

PCIE slot dust-covers! (wonder if it will come in reatil version too)
Attachment 46063

Backside of board shown with airflow holes (gold holes)
Attachment 46064

This is such a silly product to go in a home to me... I cant help but hate. :p