A little over a month ago, Intel was unusually candid about their upcoming processor roadmap. While the enthusiast-oriented Haswell-E, futuristic Broadwell, and special edition Pentium chip definitely caught our attention, it is the new "Devil's Canyon" Haswell refresh that we will be seeing first. Although this Devil's Canyon revision is by no means revolutionary, it should help lower operating temperatures and improve overclocking, courtesy of an enhanced thermal interface material (TIM) between the die and the integrated heatspreader (IHS) as well as a noteworthy reshuffling of the CPU die layout itself.

By themselves these updates shouldn't necessitate a new chipset, but regrettably Devil's Canyon support will apparently not make its way down to current 8-series LGA1150 motherboards. As a result, it has been deemed by the powers-that-be as a great opportunity to unveil the 9-series chipsets and their new forward-looking features. We can have a discussion about this approach at a later date, but for now let's see what ASUS have come up with this new generation of motherboards.

The Z97-A actually resides near the bottom of ASUS' extensive Z97 motherboard lineup but it also competes within some of the most popular alternatives around. This is due to its price of $150 filling the gap in one of the market's most desired price points; one which feeds the needs of budget-minded gamers while also offering something to price conscious overclockers.