Product Showcase
The Z270 motherboard will get you eight SATA 6 Gb/s storage ports. Combined in here are two M.2 PCI Express slots using x4 PCIe lanes, giving these (Optane compatible) ports not 10 GB/sec but 32 GB/sec of performance. There are plenty of USB 3.0 and 3.1 ports available through internal motherboard connectors, some Intel based, some ASmedia ASM2142 powered.
Here we can see the angled ATX power connector, keep in mind you will need a spacious enough chassis for the EATX sized motherboard. Above it the four DIMM slots which offer support for dual-channel DDR4 memory up to even 4133 MHz (OC). If you activate the XMP 2.0 profile in the BIOS, your memory will be automatically configured for you at its maximum clock speed and recommended voltage. You can install a maximum of 64 GB in total. Again, XMP 2.0 must be supported, we'll show you this setup running at 2133 and extremely high XMP frequency measurements later on in the article. The memory uses a technology that is called SafeDIMM and basically each DIMM slot comes with a metal key pin that increases durability. You can see that metal bar in the middle of the DIMM slit. Pretty much it reinforces the DIMM slot.
To the right you can spot a physical power and reset button as well as a diagnostic POST LED. You'll also find lots of fan headers, micro switches and buttons hidden all over the board. BTW left from the ATX power connector you can see an angled USB connector.
Yep, you may unleash some more power with graphics configurations. Support for up to 3 full length discrete VGA cards. Mind you, we can only recommend you to go with 2x multi-GPU. Three cards would bog down the 3rd card at a x4 link where two cards would both get x8 Gen 3.0 PCIe links. ASUS is doing it right, they include a High-Bandwidth SLI connector.
So I stated that this board has two M2 slots, in the upper photo if you remove three screws from the chipset heatsink, that's where the second M2 slot is hiding. And then look down below, need FAN headers? Here's the total:
- 2 x Chassis Fan connector(s)
- 1 x 5-pin EXT_FAN(Extension Fan) connector
- 2 x W_Pump+ Header
- 1 x EXT_Fan header
- 1 x W_IN header
- 1 x W_OUT header
- 1 x W_FLOW header
- 8 x Radiator Fan Headers (!)
And then for you RGB LED lighting freak-on, 2 x Aura RGB Strip Headers. Very nice.
