Final Words & Conclusion
Final words & conclusion
Um yeah, so this conclusion pretty much is 99% similar to the Gaming 7 one? It is the same motherboard aside from a few things. You know I've stated in my Kaby Lake review already that Intel really isn't delivering anymore. It's the same quad-core processor series released year after year in nearly the same performance bracket. Kaby Lake is once again a quad-core processor with minor tweaks, slightly higher turbos and a processor that can tweak to the 5 GHz domain. All in all not bad but let's face it - clock for clock these processors all roughly perform the same starting at Sandy-Bridge and the Core i5 2500 / Core i7 2600 series released in January 2011 (!). It's the clock frequencies where you can find the extra performance, not the architecture, but even then... it's all very relative. As such it once again are the motherboard manufacturers that will need to save the day. Gigabyte did a terrific job with the Gigabyte GA-Z270X Gaming 5 as reviewed today, but the enhancements are mainly aesthetically and as such the new Z270 series are going to be a very hard sell unless you haven't upgraded your PC for years. The new 200 chipset on its end is hardly different over the series 100 either. If you pick the Z270 series you will gain a few PCI-Express lanes and the ability to connect Intel Optane, which 0.00001% of you will buy. That's pretty much it.
So the primary reason for you guys upgrade would be aesthetic enhancements and a few improvements here and there. The Gigabyte GA-Z270X Gaming 7 for example offers two M.2. slots. Optane and SATA Express obviously nobody cares about. With the Gigabyte GA-Z270X Gaming 5 (and 7) comes a nice design motherboard though. It does resemble and hint a little towards the ASUS TUF SaberTooth series though. But the differences are there. Where the product series will shine is the RGB LED functionality, but surely that alone cannot be a reason enough to upgrade from Z170 ?
Performance & tweaking
The overall performance for this Gigabyte GA-Z270X Gaming 5 motherboard with a Core i5 I'd rate as "good" for the results as tested with a Core i5 7600K. Temps remain very acceptable (depending on choice of cooling) and temperatures when the CPU is overclocked with added voltage definitely seem to be a notch better opposed to Haswell and Skylake. We have been able to reach 5.0 GHz stable enough on liquid cooling. At that level you are looking at 1.30 up-to 1.35V needed on that CPU core.
Power consumption
If we step back and take the Intel reference board with a Sandy Bridge processor (2600K) without a dedicated graphics card, that platform idled at roughly 50 Watts. Once we stress the processor 100% on that platform we'd see ~120 Watts power consumption. With Kaby Lake (7600K) we noticed roughly 45 Watts in idle and 100 Watts with processor load at 100%. Things again remain relative.
The bottom line
So yeah, Gaming 5 or 7? Well, the differences are small. Lets focus on the two biggest changes, first off the Gaming 5 has the lesser audio solution, but it still is a very good one. That alone is not a reason not choose the Gaming 5 over the 7. Then Thunderbolt, the Gaming 7 has it, the gaming 5 does not. Now honestly I do not know one person who actually makes use of thunderbolt? However the 40 Mbit implementation of Thunderbolt is an Intel one, and might expensive. Now that same Thunderbolt chip is used for USB 3.1 . However performance in-between the Gaming 5 and Gaming 7 model is on both series top notch. So you REALLY must like Thunderbolt in order to purchase the Gaming 7 over the 5. These two difference are the two big ones, aside from some micro switches and a power/on/off button on the PCB. The rest is the same. So Honestly this Gaming 5 motherboard offers the better value.
Gigabyte did and gave it their though with the Gigabyte GA-Z270X Gaming 5 and 7 you'll retrieve a lovely sound solution with accompanying software suite. RGB fusion, love or hate the LED bling, it surely is a proper and nice implementation. We again however sorely miss AC WIFI and hey... why hasn't the industry moved to 10 GBit Ethernet jacks anno 2016 just yet? These two lacking features are a bit of a missed opportunity IMHO. In the end the Gigabyte GA-Z270X Gaming 5 is a truly lovely one, a stable well designed platform with nice BIOS functions and a quite a bit of popular LED bling. If you feel your system is outdated and you would like features such as USB 3.1, more SATA3 ports, nice audio, hey that's where Kaby Lake with a Z270 motherboard can make sense. Realistically if you have upgraded of the past year or 2-3 already, you might want to sit and wait for an actual generational improvement or perhaps something from the competition (AMD) that is launching some good stuff in Q1 2016.
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