The motherboard is rather plain, but the simple gold highlights add a nice distraction from the overpowering black theme.
A close up of the CPU socket shows a relatively uncluttered area, perfect for larger cooling solutions. However, the MOSFETs and capacitors are cutting it a bit fine along the top and side.
The PCI area of the board is simple offering 5 PCIe x16 lanes and a single M.2 port. At the end of the M.2 port is a small infographic showing the best configuration for multi-card setups.
I was quite surprised with the IO options available, but no USB Type-C or Thunderbolt connections really hinder the future-proofing concept that Z170 offers. From left to right, 2x PS/2 ports, 1x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI port, 2x USB 3.1 ports, 2x USB 2.0 ports, 4x USB 3.0 ports, 1x Gigabit LAN port, 2x USB 2.0 ports and 6x HD audio jacks.
The overall theme of the board is simple, something that has been a running trend with ECS motherboards of late. This results in a naked sound section of the PCB with a bare amplifier and capacitors.
Something that struck me as odd with this motherboard is the lack of headers along the bottom. Normally you could expect at least 2-3 USB 2.0 headers and 1 USB 3.0 header along with TPM, COM and other headers. To the far right behind the SATA ports are the power and reset buttons and DEBUG LED’s.
The SATA options on offer aren’t as comprehensive as some of the competition. This can be taken two ways, first is more people demand more storage so buy more drives, but on the other hand more users are moving towards cloud storage so the demand for more ports isn’t that great. It seems ECS are either cutting back to save money or are way ahead of the curve.
Moving on and we can see the single USB 3.0 header, 24-pin power connector, two fan headers and the 4x DDR4 DIMM slots.
The top of the board is zero fuss, the heat sink overhangs a few capacitors to neaten things up and you can see the connecting heat pipe which personally detracts from the overall quality of the board.
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