Intel Skylake Z170 Motherboards: A Quick Look at 55+ New Products
by Ian Cutress on August 5, 2015 7:59 AM ESTECS Z170
Despite rumors of ECS leaving the motherboard market first being widespread, refuted and then that refutation ignored, we are in constant contact with the team at ECS USA and they were more than happy to discuss a few of their upcoming motherboards for the Z170 chipset. ECS’ fortunes in the consumer motherboard market is actually to the tune of several million a year, but above the base cheap designs in Asia there has been not so much of a push into North America or Europe. For the couple of years ECS has been introducing its’ L33T (‘leet’) brand for gaming, although the nuance might be wearing a bit thin for some as the naming might not necessarily gel with anyone over 14. Nonetheless, the ECS Z170 motherboards came to our attention at Computex due to their use of the new Realtek Dragon 8118AS network controller which aims to compete in the same space as the Rivet Network’s Killer offering for gaming and network traffic prioritization.
ECS Z170 Claymore
At the front is the ATX offering, called the Claymore. Unfortunately not in Scots colors, but the general black theme I am told is so that the Claymore can integrate more easily into many different builds. Aside from the Realtek Dragon 8118AS network controller, ECS goes all out with the PCIe slots offering a combination of x8/x4/x4 from the CPU as well as a couple of others from the chipset – these are mostly likely x1 or x4, or may share bandwidth.
In the middle of the PCIe slots is an M.2 port, although for some reason this only supports M.2 in PCIe 2.0 x2 mode for PCIe based storage. Given how many lanes are available on the Z170 chipset, it makes me wonder why it is not using a full PCIe 3.0 x4. Nevertheless we also get six SATA ports with two bundled with a SATA Express port. Audio comes from the Realtek ALC1150, and USB 3.1-A ports on the rear panel are from an ASMedia ASM1142 controller.
Perhaps surprising here, but ECS is listing the Claymore as supporting HDMI 2.0. This means, because there isn’t an Alpine Ridge controller onboard, that they are using an LS-Pcon in order to do so and are the only ones who are doing it as far as I can tell. I am doubly confirming as this is being written.
ECS Z170-Blade
Despite seeing the Blade at Computex, ECS is not too ready to give details on how the board will look when launched because it is still begin decided. Nonetheless, a good micro-ATX motherboard is always respected, and the Blade will also carry the Dragon Ethernet part alongside USB 3.1.
ECS Z170IU-C43 – Image from 4gamer.net
For the low end of the market, ECS is providing the Z170IU-C43 – a mini-ITX motherboard with a somewhat odd design arrangement. Here the 24-pin ATX connector is at the edge of the board, but due to the CPU and chipset arrangement the 8-pin CPU connector is in no-mans land to the bottom left of the socket. This means that with a GPU in play this connector is very hard to get to and means that cables will be all over the chassis. It’s a design point that all the motherboard manufacturers have had to contend with at some point.
ECS is stating again that we have HDMI 2.0 connectivity on this board, while other functions include the Intel I219-V based networking, the Realtek ALC892 codec for audio, two USB 3.1-A ports on the rear panel and a single PCIe 3.0 x16 slot.
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8steve8 - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
how about the 6700k CPUs in the USA?Luminair - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
FYI Asus has an alert on BBB for sending people broken products: http://www.bbb.org/greater-san-francisco/business-...Hundreds of complaints this year, including people with broken motherboard who did an RMA and received in return... a broken motherboard.
DanNeely - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Ugh. Are they only testing RMAs after getting them sent back twice? (Assuming the first time is user error, not a hardware fault?)apoclypse - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Wow. Remember when motherboards and computer components were ugly? Thos Asrock boards are a work of art. The same with the MSI boards. Not to impressed with what Asus has this time around (in-terms of looks). I've recently built a Haswell-E rig with the X99X from Asrock so I'm not really looking to buy anything but damn those boards make me regret not waiting. Ah well, I needed the extra cores anyway.NARC4457 - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Am I the only one that is still ridiculously confused at the next generation of fast storage? m.2/nvMe what's bootable, what's not, what pinout (B/M)....What the hell is going on with these standards (sic)?
Ian Cutress - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
M.2 is a connection standard that can support both SATA and PCIe storage protocols. It is up to the manufacturer to decide which protocol to implement.SATA drives can use AHCI or IDE, while PCIe drives can be either AHCI or NVMe, but it depends on the controller if NVMe is supported.
Typically NVMe has to be enabled in the BIOS in order to boot from the drive, and you have to install the operating system in UEFI mode - basically Win8.1/10 does this already.
Most Z170 motherboards with M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 should be supporting NVMe devices as boot drives , although I would still refer to the motherboard manufacturers website to confirm this is the case, either on the motherboard's page or in the motherboard's downloadable manual.
Hope that helps.
NARC4457 - Monday, August 10, 2015 - link
Thanks Ian, that actually helps a lot.joex4444 - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
As an owner of a PCIe 2.0 x8 RAID card, I'd love to see someone put out a PCIe 3.0 x8 slot controlled by the PCH that's actually x8. I see a lot of slots that are physically x16, with x8 connectors but the text always refers to them as PCIe 3.0 x4 (PCH). As I've 8 drives connected to that, I want the full x8 connection. Now of course using the second physical x16 slot on SLI boards and taking 8 lanes from the CPU ought to work, but that drops the GPU down to an x8 link; it would be great to use x16/x8 instead of x16/x4 or x8/x8 here (GPU/RAID).Z170 looked so promising, but so far only X99 offers the PCIe configuration described above.
Ian Cutress - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
The chipset essentially has five PCIe 3.0 x4 controllers, and you can't combine them into an x8. You could use a PCIe bridge chip like a PLX to convert 4 to 8, but you'll still be limited by the four lanes in into the chip. The only way you will get an 8-lane slot is from the processor, unfortunately (because then it would open up GPU possibilities).DanNeely - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link
Is there any reason other than market segmenting (protecting LGA2011's 40 CPU lanes) or avoiding a single device being able to max out the DMI link for them not to allow combos bigger than a 4x?