ASUS? Z79I PLUS represents a solution to a relatively new problem: how do you cater to the feature expectations of enthusiasts while delivering a motherboard that fits into a diminutive ITX chassis? While larger enthusiast-grand motherboards steal most of the attention, there's a quickly expanding market for small form factor solutions and ASUS has been at the forefront of their development. Take the Z87-era Maximus VI Impact for example. It is still considered one of the best ITX motherboards available even after the introduction of Z97-based boards like today's example. Granted, the Z79I PLUS? goals are a bit more pedestrian when compared against any RoG alternative but that doesn't mean it won't satisfy pretty much everyone.

The trick to creating an appealing ITX motherboard is to finely balance features, performance capabilities and the components necessary for sufficient overclocking headroom and shoehorn these into as small an area as possible. All of that has to happen without completely blowing cost out the window. In principle this actually sounds much easier than it really is but ASUS has distilled their engineering down to a precise science. There's no better example of this mantra than the Z79I PLUS? price $160 price in relation to the feature set it offers. They even threw in WiFi connectivity through an included antenna.