Intel Skylake Z170 Motherboards: A Quick Look at 55+ New Products
by Ian Cutress on August 5, 2015 7:59 AM ESTEVGA Z170
Over the past few generations of EVGA motherboards, one of the goals has been to emulate the success they achieved during the X58 motherboard era. At that time, the motherboards were highly praised for their overclocking prowess for what was (and still is) a relatively small motherboard manufacturer. EVGA’s historic strengths lie in their legions of fans and a typical expectation that in most of their big markets, they will field the warranty issues rather than the retailer. Z170, like the others, brings on the EVGA wind in the three regular segments.
EVGA Z170 Classified
Aimed at the pure high end, the EVGA Classified might be the most expensive Z170 board on the market. Here they have used a single PLX 8747 chip under that middle heatsink to provide x8/x8/x8/x8 bandwidth to the PCIe slots. Using a PLX 8747 chip on a mid-range motherboard is not new, it was all the rage back in Z77, but what makes it different here is that the company that manufactures the chip has changed hands and now focuses on the enterprise market. As a result, the costs of such a chip are seemingly doubled overnight, making it an unenticing prospect for the consumer market. Nonetheless, EVGA is aiming for an overclocking motherboard with Quad-SLI support and here it is.
Alongside the extensive heatsink configuration to aid both the power delivery and that PLX chip, EVGA equips the board with dual network controllers (I219-V and I210-AT), a Creative Sound Core3D audio solution, two USB 3.1-A ports on the rear panel, an M.2 slot running in PCIe 3.0 x4 mode, seven 4-pin PWM fan headers, triple BIOS support, EZ voltage read points and the onboard readout will output the temperature when in the operating system.
EVGA Z170 FTW
The FTW follows a similar design pattern to the classified in terms of hardware layout, but reduces it all down into a more cost effective market. As a result the PLX chip is gone, the power delivery heatsink arrangement is reduced, a number of the OC features are lifted off and other connectivity is reduced. The single network port is an Intel I219-V, there is no USB 3.1 and we have the base six SATA ports from the chipset. We still keep the M.2 based off of the PCIe 3.0 x4 bandwidth, but the PCIe slots only support up to x8/x4/x4 with the final slot being an x1. This seems a little odd, given how many PICe lanes the chipset can use.
EVGA Z170 Stinger
The Stinger is the mini-ITX solution, keeping the line alive after several generations. Taking on board previous comments, the power connectors are now on the outside of the DRAM slots or at the top of the motherboard, along with the important front panel connectors. There seems to be enough space around the CPU slot for larger air coolers, although the SATA connector placement will be a nightmare when locking cables and large PCIe cards are used. EVGA does list the Stinger as having a 10-layer PCB, which might make it one of the mini-ITX motherboards with the most layers, although this just makes the design of the board easier and pushes up cost. Similar to the FTW, we don’t get USB 3.1 on this model with only an Intel I219-V network port and Realtek audio.
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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?