The ASRock Z270 Supercarrier Motherboard Review: 4-way SLI and 5 Gigabit Ethernet on Kaby Lake
by E. Fylladitakis on September 29, 2017 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- SLI
- Aquantia
- Z270
The ASRock Z270 Supercarrier Test Bed
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency/monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.
The ASRock Z270 Supercarrier has the multi-core acceleration enabled by default, plus an extra CPU multipler for good measure. The FCLK frequency is set to 800 MHz by default as well and all current/temperature limiters are enabled and set to their default settings. The only safety setting that is disabled by default is the reliability stress restrictor.
Test Setup | |
Processor | Intel Core i7-7700K (ES, Retail Stepping), 91W, $340 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 4.2 GHz (4.5 GHz Turbo) |
Motherboards | ASRock Z270 Supercarrier |
Cooling | Alphacool Eisbaer 240 |
Power Supply | Corsair AX1200i Platinum PSU |
Memory | G.Skill DDR4-2400 C15 2x16 GB 1.2V |
Memory Settings | XMP @ 2400 |
Video Cards | MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB (1150/1202 Boost) |
Hard Drive | Crucial MX200 1TB |
Case | Open Test Bed |
Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit SP1 |
Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX200 SSDs. Crucial stepped up to the plate as our benchmark list grows larger with newer benchmarks and titles, and the 1TB MX200 units are strong performers. Based on Marvell's 88SS9189 controller and using Micron's 16nm 128Gbit MLC flash, these are 7mm high, 2.5-inch drives rated for 100K random read IOPs and 555/500 MB/s sequential read and write speeds. The 1TB models we are using here support TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 (eDrive) encryption and have a 320TB rated endurance with a three-year warranty.
Further Reading: AnandTech's Crucial MX200 (250 GB, 500 GB & 1TB) Review
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU. The AX1200i was the first power supply to offer digital control and management via Corsair's Link system, but under the hood it commands a 1200W rating at 50C with 80 PLUS Platinum certification. This allows for a minimum 89-92% efficiency at 115V and 90-94% at 230V. The AX1200i is completely modular, running the larger 200mm design, with a dual ball bearing 140mm fan to assist high-performance use. The AX1200i is designed to be a workhorse, with up to 8 PCIe connectors for suitable four-way GPU setups. The AX1200i also comes with a Zero RPM mode for the fan, which due to the design allows the fan to be switched off when the power supply is under 30% load.
Further Reading: AnandTech's Corsair AX1500i Power Supply Review
Thank you to G.Skill for providing us with memory. G.Skill has been a long-time supporter of AnandTech over the years, for testing beyond our CPU and motherboard memory reviews. We've reported on their high capacity and high-frequency kits, and every year at Computex G.Skill holds a world overclocking tournament with liquid nitrogen right on the show floor.
Further Reading: AnandTech's Memory Scaling on Haswell Review, with G.Skill DDR3-3000
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Ryan Smith - Saturday, September 30, 2017 - link
"You guys are reviewing so many z270 boards all of a sudden"An amusing or annoying quirk of the motherboard industry (depending on your POV) is that they'll promote motherboards right up to the very end. So when we reach out to vendors for review samples, sometimes we can get hardware that has a short remaining shelf life, especially since it takes some time to put together these reviews.
Unfortunately we don't dictate the hardware lifecycle schedule, so all we can do it get reviews published and try to stay ahead.
HollyDOL - Tuesday, October 3, 2017 - link
Ye, Asus already has z370 boards on their website published. I suspect it's a matter of days before mobos and cpus start getting available.crashtech - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
Tweaktown reviewed this board back in April, when it was still relevant news. I hope Z370 board reviews don't have to wait 5 months as well.ddriver - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
But it wasn't "in depth", it was "hasty and inferior". As we all know, good in depth reviews take at least 5-6 months to make ;)Morawka - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
all of tweaktowns stuff is full of opinion, i quit reading it years ago. Their newsletters are good, but when you actually read the content you'll notice a heavy biased against Intel and Nvidia. It's amateur hour over there.ddriver - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
It is funny yo should mention intel and nvidia bias, because this place is full of it. And crapple of course. The richer the corporation, the more bias basically.Notmyusualid - Sunday, October 8, 2017 - link
@ MorawkaIndeed, this is one of the least-biased sites you will come across. Many of us felt an Apple-bias for some time, but I don't smell that any more.
What I do not like, is half-baked reviews. Review a CPU, gaming & all, just one time, and save us the speculation in the comments from the fidiots (they know who they are).
GrzesiuLN2 - Sunday, October 1, 2017 - link
Tweaktown is just awful when it comes to reviews. Their whole site is based on spamming adds and feeding the rumor mill.DanNeely - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
Unless it can't be used for basic gigabit service for some reason; I don't see why OEMs adding a 5/10GB port are still keeping 2x 1 GB ones. Either only have one extra-just because port; or go all in and put 4x 1gb ports on to allow using the board in a DIY router.1_rick - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
Seems kind of crazy to put 4 NICs on a motherboard like this. A super-gaming PC that's also a router? It's a floor wax AND a dessert topping!