GIGABYTE Z270X-Gaming 8 Motherboard Review

Overclocking and Conclusion

Overclocking

To give a feel for the overclocking performance potential of the Z270X-Gaming 8 motherboard, we attempted to push it to known CPU-supported performance parameters with minimal tweaking. At the stock base clock speed of 100Mhz, we pushed the CPU to 5.1GHz with a 4.8GHz ring bus and 4000MHz memory speeds. This was done at a 1.35V CPU voltage and a 1.36V memory voltage with all other values left at default settings. All overclocking sessions remained stable for over 4hrs. System stability was tested running the AIDA64 stability test in conjunction with EVGA's OC Scanner X graphical benchmark running at 1280×1024 resolution and 8x MSAA in stress test mode. Note that 8GB (2 x 4GB) of Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4-4000 memory modules were used for the overclocking tests.

100MHz Base Clock Stats with 5.1GHZ CPU speed

Pricing

As of September 15, the GIGABYTE Z270X-Gaming 8 motherboard was available at Amazon.com for $469.99 with Free shipping.

Conclusion

The GIGABYTE Z270X-Gaming 8 motherboard is a solid product for GIGABYTE, offering a mix of familiar features with a slew of new features to giving the board an edge over its competitors. GIGABYTE balances the board design well with a unique aesthetic and a very diverse offering of storage solutions. Its performance falls in-line with other boards of the same class and its overclocking potential leaves nothing to sneer at. While the price might seem a bit high, the Bitspower designed CPU VRM cooler begins to justify its price premium. The included Bitspower block is a hybrid cooling solution, usable as an air cooler or as part of a DYI liquid loop. The block itself has a nickel-plate copper bottom plate and an acrylic top plate forming the liquid channel for a nice look and of the high quality design that enthusiasts have come to expect from Bitspower.

There were a few oddities in the board's design, the biggest being the bandwidth splitting between the first three PCIe x16 slots. If a card is populated in the tertiary PCIe x16 slot, the bandwidth in the secondary slot is automatically reduced to x4 because the second and third slots share bandwidth. This could become problematic if you wanted to run a tri-card build with this board. For the price of the board, GIGABYTE could have integrated a PLX bridge chip to add additional bandwidth for the PCIe x16 slots.

The other issue with the board had to do with the design of the Bitspower VRM block. Because of the placement of the right portion of the block, we were unable to use the Noctua cooler in its default configuration. The right mount bracket conflicted with the block, preventing proper mounting of the brackets resulting in forced mounting of the cooler in its alternate sideways orientation. Additionally, the performance of the VRM cooler was lackluster at best in comparison to performance with active airflow over the block. While the block does look good on the board, its performance does not justify the complexities involved with adding it to a DIY cooling loop unless you are using it for a specific build aesthetic.

Strengths

• Stock performance
• Overclocking performance
• Board aesthetics, layout, and design
• UEFI BIOS design and usability
• Integrated Bitspower nickel-plated copper hybrid cooler for CPU VRM cooling
• Storage offerings – dual M.2 ports, SATA Express ports, SATA ports, and U.2 ports
• Network offerings – dual GigE ports and 2×2 802.11ac WiFi adapter ports
• PCIe x1 slot 1 usable with dual slot video card seated in primary PCIe x16 slot
• Configurable RGB LEDs using RGB Fusion through both UEFI and Windows app
• RGB illuminated rear shield panel
• Dual RGBW headers
• Inclusion of high bandwidth NVIDIA SLI adapter
• Integrated 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 support

Weaknesses

• CMOS battery placement
• No PCIe x1 port to right of primary PCIe x16 slot
• Reduced bandwidth of secondary PCIe x16 slot to x4 with card populating PCIe x16 tertiary slot
• Perfomance of liquid cooled VRM block versus its performance under active air cooling
• Incompatibility between Noctua mounting bracket and Bitspower block in its default configuration
• Price