Supermicro C7Z270-CG LGA1151 Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts

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 Supermicro C7Z270-CG’s colourful, bright green aesthetic is absolutely stunning and has a certain charm. Instead of opting for a neutral, understated visual style, the motherboard adopts a lavish finish which instantly captures your attention. Even though it might not be suitable for certain builds due to a colour clash, it’s Supermicro’s most attractive consumer motherboard by a considerable margin. Personally, I love the green PCI-E slots, imposing I/O cover and inventive PCH logo. Not only that, the audio segment’s shielding cover is a joy to look at and upholds a great level of synergy across the motherboard’s surface area. The colour contrast is flawless and the lack of RGB illumination didn’t prove to be a huge issue. If anything, infusing certain shades alongside the motherboard’s unusual colour scheme wouldn’t have helped matters. Of course, there is a white LED strip embedded in the PCH and the isolation trace lights up in a vibrant green hue.

As mentioned earlier, the motherboard utilises the finest quality components including Vitec 59PR72-151 chokes which have a -40C to 125C thermal range. Furthermore, the motherboard has a Primarion PXE1610BDN, PXC1410BPM and high-frequency power inductors. The capacitors are engineered to contend with extreme thermal variation and greatly improve the motherboard’s reliability. Interestingly, Supermicro incorporated as ASMedia ASM1142 controller to provide USB 3.1 Type-A and Type-C functionality. Speaking of storage options, the motherboard has dual M.2 support and two U2 ports. As a result, it’s possible to configure a ridiculously fast NVMe RAID0 array. On another note, the motherboard’s design is fantastic for overclocking enthusiasts due to the onboard buttons, diagnostic LED and buzzer. Rather surprisingly, the motherboard relies on the previous generation Realtek ALC1150, but it’s perfectly suitable for the task and excelled during RMAA testing.

Moving onto the BIOS, I have quite a lot of complaints but at least Supermicro didn’t rest on their laurels and tried to update the user interface. Unfortunately, the BIOS is still far too complex for its own good and likely to bamboozle users without exceptional technical knowledge. On the one hand, Supermicro products are tailored towards knowledgeable enthusiasts with a penchant for the finer details. However, the company surely wants to go beyond their core user base and encourage regular consumers to consider a Supermicro motherboard for the very first time. There are other problems too such as the drop down menu failing to show which particular setting has been selected and the larger header text being not being aligned properly. Thankfully some of these are easy fixes and would go some way to improve people’s comfort when browsing different sections of the BIOS. Overall, I think Supermicro is moving in the right direction and it’s a matter of when not if in regards to making the BIOS more polished.

In terms of performance, the motherboard fares pretty well and doesn’t have any major weaknesses barring the mediocre UDP networking speeds. Even though it’s unable to top the charts, the performance deficit is exceedingly small and you’re not going to reap any substantial benefits by purchasing the product in first place. Evidently, the motherboard choice doesn’t inhibit the gaming experience or multi-threaded capabilities. One area that should be considered carefully is the ease of overclocking. Unlike some of the other options being launched today, you can’t simply dial in the core ratio and insert the desired voltage. To be clear, the motherboard’s power circuitry is excellent and the limitation stems from the CPU itself. On the other hand, overclocking on a Supermicro motherboard isn’t as user-friendly. If you can accept this and employ a patient approach, the motherboard will easily fulfil your needs.

Pros

• Consistent storage speeds
• Daring aesthetic design
• Excellent NVMe storage options including M.2 and U.2
• Good memory latency
• Great selection of onboard tools for overclocking
• Impeccable power circuitry
• Onboard buzzer is helpful for troubleshooting
• Server-grade reliability
• Superb audio results despite using older ALC1150 codec

Cons

• BIOS layout is a little cumbersome and intimidating to newcomers
• BIOS needing tweaking to accept a simple XMP profile
• Lacklustre UDP networking speeds

“Supermicro has created another extremely reliable, feature-rich motherboard which brings server quality to the consumer market. While I love the vibrant green colour scheme, the BIOS needs tweaking to welcome those without prior experience of Supermicro products.”  

Supermicro C7Z270-CG LGA1151 Motherboard Review

Thank you Supermicro for providing us with this sample.