Product Showcase

The Z270 motherboard will get you six Intel chipset based 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. BTW the industry calls USB 3.0 / USB 3.1 Gen 1 these days, a little misleading TBH. USB 3.1 Gen 2 would be the new and proper 10 Gbps connectors. This motherboard has all gen 2 connectors and thus you get full speed.

Keep in mind, if you use M2 SSDs, there are restrictions on the SATA ports:

• 1 x M.2 Socket 3, with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (both SATA & PCIE mode) (When the M.2_1 Socket 3 is operating in SATA mode, SATA port 1 will be disabled.)
• 1 x M.2 Socket 3, with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280 storage devices support (PCIE mode only) (When the M.2_2 Socket 3 is operatin in PCIe 3.0 x4 mode, SATA ports 5 and 6 will be disabled.)
    

 
Here we can see 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 2,133 and extremely high XMP frequency measurements later on in the article.

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-Bandwith SLI connector. As simple as it is, they are first ones I spotted doing so, I love that.

 
So if you are installing an M2 SSD, one can be positioned just above the upper PCIe slot. 
  

Simply pop it in and close the lid. And yes, the other can be positioned just below the chipset heatsink.  Again, if you use the M2 slots, there are restrictions on the SATA ports as these are shared.