Pricing
Unfortunately, there’s been a complete lack of information regarding the Z270 motherboards and their retail prices. As a result, it’s impossible to conduct a fair comparison between numerous products and assess the value proposition. Rest assured, once the full Z270 range is available to purchase, I’ll be adding the appropriate links and revisiting the pricing analysis. According to my sources, it’s likely vendors will add approximately £10-£30 compared to the previous generation. However, this doesn’t help matters when a company unveils something completely new and the predecessor can’t be researched to gauge a pricing estimate. Honestly, I’d expect more details to emerge during CES when PR contacts return from the holiday break.
Overview
The motherboard is based on a jet black theme which works alongside the stainless steel shielding to form a distinctive aesthetic. Not only that, the imposing I/O cover with the bold Gigabyte branding is stunning and injects a hint of character into the motherboard’s visual style. Of course, the classic colour combination lends itself well to a huge range of builds and you can opt for a more flamboyant touch via the company’s RGB Fusion technology. This particular form of lighting illuminates the underside of the PCB, PCI-E segment and even an attractive strip positioned next to the DIMM slots. The lighting strip has a lovely pattern and you can mod it to create a truly individual product. The lighting is really bright and each colour has a lovely hue. Also, you can attach a LED strip and control it using Gigabyte’s software suite. Honestly, the jet black colour scheme and RGB lighting is a match made in heaven.
Gigabyte didn’t scrimp on the motherboard’s electronics and utilised an 8-phase power delivery, 10k-rated black capacitors with an ultra-low ESR and anti-sulfur alloy layer on the resistors to prevent damage from shorts. Additionally, the CPU has a 15 microinch thick gold plating combating corrosion over time. The Gigabyte Z270X-Ultra Gaming contains five fan headers which all can be controlled and they support up to 2A as well as taking advantage of overcurrent protection. The six temperature sensors can be handy to analyse the motherboard’s health. As expected, the memory slots and the main PCI-E x16 slots have a fortifying metal shielding to reduce EMI and support the connected devices more effectively.
In terms of storage, Gigabyte ignored the typical Z270 arrangement and incorporated SATA Express and U.2 support. Unfortunately, the bandwidth limitations mean this was chosen instead of a secondary M.2 slot. Honestly, I don’t think this is a wise move because the U.2 standard only applies to a tiny section of customers and SATA Express adoption is pretty much non-existent. On the other hand, M.2 is becoming more popular and seems the go-to successor to SATA. The motherboard’s storage performance was commendable apart from the M.2 write which fell below the mark. On a more positive note, the Gigabyte Z270X-Ultra Gaming has USB 3.1 Type-A and Type-C connectivity which should prove useful in the near future.
The motherboard’s audio solution revolves around the Realtek ALC1220 codec which is protected by an EMI cover. Additionally, the audio section is on a dedicated PCB to reduce interference and has a 120dB signal-to-noise ratio. Not only that, there’s a smart headphone amplifier which adjusts the impedance rating and support for DSD128 hardware decoding. Throughout the testing process, the audio performance was stellar, especially at higher bit-rates.
Gigabyte’s BIOS has been improved at a progressive pace and is really easy-to-use. In particular, the end-user isn’t swamped with a huge array of settings and everything is divided into clearly labelled sections. Furthermore, the BIOS’ UI is easy on the eyes and the new fan software utility makes optimising your cooling hardware a simple task. The Easy Mode is useful for those wanting to enact small changes or check certain parameters on a single page.
As mentioned in the other Z270 motherboard reviews, the performance variation between different products is extremely small. Despite this, the motherboard doesn’t have any major weaknesses barring the weak M.2 write result and impressed on a regular basis. The networking, audio latency and memory bandwidth figures are brilliant and even surpasses the company’s own flagship AORUS Z270X-Gaming 9. Overall, the motherboard is a superb creation which offers fantastic performance in many important areas.
Pros
Cons
“The Gigabyte Z270X-Ultra Gaming performs brilliantly in a wide range of benchmarks and has a user-friendly BIOS. Furthermore, the motherboard incorporates USB 3.1 functionality, a superb audio solution and beautiful RGB lighting which offers astounding customisation.”
Gigabyte Z270X-Ultra Gaming LGA1151 Motherboard Review
Thank you Gigabyte for providing us with this sample.
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