ASUS Z170 Deluxe review - Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & conclusion

Son, I Am Not Disappointed - No Sir. Right after the initial tests of the Core i7 6700K on the ASUS Z170 Deluxe motherboard, I ended being impressed. Intel doesn't make and thus offer any reference motherboards anymore, so it is hard to define a reference processors performance point as the board mother-partners will do everything in their power to tweak out the last bit of performance. And sure, that's not a bad thing but there can be some platform (brand) performance differences. But yeah, the extra perf you see is mostly related to the higher base clocks. That's just the processor side, I mean the Z170 Deluxe offer it all in terms of features, stability and reliability really, heaps of USB 3.0/3.1 connectors, plenty SATA3 ports, super fast M.2., a fantastic audio solution and then there's the Wifi implementation, I was impressed by it so very much. Triple antenna's and AC compatible, with the right router you can get a 1.3 Gbps connections, as we did. Fantastic stuff really.

The performance is up there and combined with DDR4 memory this processor makes a good step forward. Combined with the series 100 chipset new features are available as well, SATA3, M.2, some manufacturers will even go U2 and Sata Express. Then there's the added benefit of DDR4 memory that not only use less power, the frequency can be so much higher as well, bringing more bandwidth and overall performance to the applications that require fast memory. Combine that with things like nice Gigabit jacks, exemplary audio solutions on the new motherboards and things like USB 3.1. So what i am trying to say here is that the overall platform experience is what it is all about for Skylake. Performance with kick-ass features. 

Storage

Combined with eight SATA 6Gbps ports we can hardly complain about anything. Interesting I find to be the developments on the M.2 interface, pop in a M.2 compatible PCI-E SSD and you'll see your SSD quickly perform in the 700/800 Mb/sec range. Overall your SATA and M.2 connectivity is plentiful and top notch when it comes to performance. Great to see is that the slow has obtained a x4 PCIe interface connection allowing it 32 Gbps of bandwidth to work in. To compare a little, your SATA3 port has 6 Gbps available. So that small form factor SSD solution now is very future proof. 

Aesthetics

Taste differ per person, but admittedly we do totally like the way the ASUS Z170 Deluxe looks. The black and white color schema combined with the nicely designs heatsinks. Yeah, it is an intriguing product to look at really albeit a little busy, there is a lot going on at the PCB. The PCH heatsink has white LEDs to create a bit of a HALO effect coming from under the shielding, it makes the motherboard pop out of your chassis. Well visually that is. The PCB is nicely matte dark as it has received a proper coated layer, including the dark connectors, dark capacitors, with the subtle heatsinks this rocks my boat. This is just a nice looking solution for the enthusiast PC gamer. 

Performance & tweaking

The overall performance in combo with the ASUS 170 Deluxe motherboard as such I'd rate as "really good" for a quad core Core i7 6700K. Temps remain reasonable at default clock, temperatures when the CPU is overclocked with added voltage definitely seem to be a notch better opposed to Haswell but still can rise fast and hot. Our sample was not quite stable enough at 4.9 GHz but 4.8 GHz was stable on liquid cooling. At that level we needed a lot of voltage, 1.45 volts in the processor. 
 

The bottom line

I think the ASUS Z170 Deluxe is a terrific motherboard, great looks and design, terrific USB connectivity, two Intel Gigabit jacks and then that blazing fast WIFI implementation tick all my desired boxes. Next to that there's lots of things and stuff to do in the BIOS when it comes to tweaking. Your DDR4 memory can be easily configured by enabling the XMP 2.0 profile. You will gain excellent features combined with seriously nice performance and very decent energy consumption levels. I have no doubt that some of you can reach 5 GHz on this CPU, the ASUS motherboard will certainly allow for this. The overall combination of the ASUS Z170 Deluxe and a Core i7 6700K however is grand in my book. Highly recommended if you are due for an upgrade, unfortunately I did not have a price on this mobo at the time of writing though we expect the 250~300 EURO range.

Update the suggested retail rpice for this product is € 285

Handy related downloads: 

• Prime95
• SiSoft Sandra
• AIDA
• CPU-Z
• HWMonitor
  
  
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