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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wiyosaya - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
I am confused! 4-way SLI? Am I living in a time bubble or something? I thought that nVidia announced some time ago that they were focusing on 2-way SLI due to scaling issues and that support for 4-way SLI would be minimal in the future.Besides, with 4-lane pci-e on this thingy, if anyone really wanted to do 4-way SLI, it seems like Threadripper (or sIntel's equivalent enthusiast parts) would be a much better platform for 4-way SLI.
Maybe ASRock is just trying to prolong the wave artificially.
MadAd - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
there are other niche uses for 4 way, a hobbyist mining rig, a small render farm for blender, or the well off who just want to throw money at making a stonking pcBrokenCrayons - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
Typical GPU mining on a large scale can work with a 1x PCIe slot so four 16x slots aren't really of any added value for that sort of situation.Notmyusualid - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
4x SLI on Pascal works. I have 4x 1070 FTWs in my main rig. Search it out on a well-known video site.Due to installed PCIe switches, all four of my GPUs 'see' a x16 3.0 slot each, but they are multiplexed together to share 40 available lanes from the CPU, and this seems more than plenty, so I shake my head to comments fighting over how many lanes you have over this amount, because this works just fine. *Maybe* 28 would be too few, but 40 is just fine. Depends on what you are doing I suppose.
I won't be buying Threadripper due to what I see as confusion over different modes of operation, and possible latency issues (depending on application), and the multiple internal dies. Back in the day, it amused me to see people poking fun at the 'Core 2 Quads' for not being 'real' quad cores, but nobody I have seen has mentioned that TR is not just two - but FOUR separate dies on the same package, whilst the competition - Intel, has all its cores on a single die / package this time around (as far as I know).
I'm slightly impressed with TR, but not enough to buy it, given I already have 14c/28t Xeon.
supdawgwtfd - Sunday, October 1, 2017 - link
TR is 2 dies.The other 2 dies are just there to help support the IHS.
Perhaps if you weren't completely ignorant you would know this. And saying TR is confusing compared to Intel is a laugh.
Had a look at Intel's X299 line up at all?
Noticed that they have many different CPUs all with different pcie lanes?
Now THAT is confusing.
Notmyusualid - Sunday, October 8, 2017 - link
Well stone me. 2 / 4 dies? It still leaves the opportunity for increased latency, as some sites have mentioned. So my comment stands.But yes, recent Intel confusion with socket / chipset compatibility leaves much to be desired. No way I'm going to defend that. But you'll know when you build your Intel rig, core-core latencies will be lower.
rocky12345 - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
Great review as always thanks.It seems weird that the MB makers are releasing so many z270 boards when it is basically at the end of life even before a year is up from when it was released. I guess Intel caught the MB makers off guard here as well and they are stumbling fast to get these boards out ASAP because of the R&D it cost to design them.
timecop1818 - Saturday, September 30, 2017 - link
This board was released months ago (like April 2017 or earlier), they just got around to reviewing itrpjkw11 - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
I really like the three M.2 connectors. I have no need, yet, for U.2, but I long ago ditched HDDs and now run two SSDs.rsandru - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
The NE5532 is an op-amp and not a headset amplifier.It's been first released in 1985 and has been found in all kinds of electronics since then because it's cheap. I'm struggling to find a reason why it's mentioned as some sort of feature...