Intel Skylake Z170 Motherboards: A Quick Look at 55+ New Products

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• Norseman4 - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  I'm looking at mITX boards and I saw 3 that are worthwhile (sorry ECS) that has an M.2 port, or a position on the board either stating M.2 or showing the screw positions for it. Only one of them had descriptions about it. (ASUS Z170i Pro Gaming)
  
  What of the Gigabyte Z170N-WIFI? The port is on the underside of the board, but I don't know if it's strictly SATA or not.
  The EVGA Stinger looks good, but it needs something else before it can be used. Will this be dedicated to a WIFI card like previous versions or can an M.2 drive be used?

• Norseman4 - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  Follow up: The EVGA Stinger has a daughter card that converts those pins to M.2 Key E configuration, not B or M that seem to be used for drives.

• Rauwomos - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link

  Does that mean it has no chance of being used for an M.2 drive then as it is solely an E Keyed M.2 port, is it being converted from a useable key to an e key?

• Norseman4 - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link

  http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=111-S...
  
  The 20pin socket that's marked M.2 is converted to a M.2 Key E using a daughterboard. I have not seen any drives in the Key E format, so it looks like it's just for something else.
  
  http://www.hwtools.net/PDF/M2%20Adapter%20Selectio...

• Norseman4 - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  MSI has information for the Z170i Gaming Pro AC, which lists Turbo M.2. I haven't read what that just yet though. (Source: Tom's Hardware)

• Norseman4 - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  From an older post about MSI's X99 boards, Turbo M.2 = M.2 Gen 3.0 x4 (All of their Z170 boards have at least 1)

• Dahak - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  The USB Gen thing was a result of the USB-IF when they release usb 3.1, apple, msi is technically correct as they are following the proper naming.
  
  Yes its confusing to regular customers.

• Impulses - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  I'm happy with my MSI P67 board but I think I wanna go ASUS this time, that Z170-A looks like a good no nonsense no frills board... And the Z97/X99-A both reviewed pretty well. Kinda light on USB ports but whatever... All I really care for is a decent layout, solid software, and M.2 for an SM951.

• vLsL2VnDmWjoTByaVLxb - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  "In the previous Z97 chipset, there are a total of 18 Flex-IO ports that can flip between PCIe lanes, USB 3.0 ports or SATA 6 Gbps ports. For Z97, this moves up to 26 and can be used in a variety of configurations:"
  
  I think you mean Z170 in that second paragraph.

• Ryan Smith - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  Indeed we do. Thanks.