Product Showcase

Product Showcase

You will not find any U2 storage connector or SATA Express connectors here. Hurrah! But eight SATA3 ports ain't massive either. Remember, this is Z270 and with a Skylake or Kaby Lake processors you simply are more limited in available PCIe lanes (needed for SATA IO) opposed to say an X99 platform with Core i7 6950K or something.

The audio solution is based on a Realtek ALC S1220 CODEC, ASUS however has upgraded the circuitry and applied their ROG Supreme FX audio suite to it including an ES9023P HD DAC alongside nice headphone connectivity slash quality. 

You can spot high audio grade fine gold capacitors. Fine gold capacitors are suited for high-grade audio equipment to provide rich sound in the bass and clearer high frequencies. So the onboard audio combines an S1220 codec, ESS Sabre DAC, and Texas Instruments op-amp to deliver sound with a range of speakers and headsets. It offers a 120-dB signal-to-noise ratio with the line-in rated at an 113-dB SNR.  
 

 
One 4 and one 8-pin power connectors for that processor of yours, should be plenty enough. The motherboard has (I think I spotted) a 10+2 phase power delivery design for the processor based on digital power controllers. ASUS, as always, follows their stringent component selection.