Gigabyte Z170 shown at Computex.

New Z170 Gigabyte boards shown at Computex.

Skylake is due in a month or two and so many Z170 boards were shown off at this years Computex.

Gigabyte had some killer looking boards shown off such as,


GA-Z170 Gaming G1





This will be one of the top end boards and fully loaded.

LED trace paths feature seven colour choices.



Sound is via Creative ZxRi, three OP-AMPS it seems and it has the high-end audio grade Nichicon capacitors you would expect.



Expansion slots have these metal supports for extra heavy/large GFX cards (and help reduce signal noise apparently) and two 32Gb/s M.2 slots



Lots of SATAIII and SATA express.



PLX chip so it supports 4way SLI+Crossfire, Turbo Bclock could be an extra clock generator a bit like the Z97 SOC Force had.



Threaded holes for water cooling barbs and underneath what looks like a huge phase count to provide good clean power to the CPU.



Two USB3.0 internal headers, ECO mode slows CPU to conserve power/heat.



Rear I/O is fully loaded with USB3.1 typeC, Dual NICs and WiFi.


GA-Z170X Gaming 7



Still a well featured board.



2 way SLI and maybe 3 way Crossfire and still two 32Gb/s M.2 slots



Creative sound chip, still has the fancy audio capacitors and OP-AMP upgrade option.



Still a lot of power phases it seems hiding under the heatsinks.



Rear I/O looking good including USB3.1 TypeC and gold plated connectors.


GA-Z170X Gaming 5.



Killer NIC, USB3.1 typeC, 32Gb/s M.2 slot, 3 SATA Express, possibly Realtek Sound chip on this board due to costs.


GA-Z170X Gaming 3



Killer NIC, USB3.1 typeC, 2way SLI and 3way Crossfire I'm guessing.


GA-Z170X UD5 TH



A nice looking board and the gold is tastefully done, the metal slot covers could do with being black.


GA-Z170X UD3.



All that Ultra Durable goodness in a budget friendly board.


So overall an impressive looking line up, nice to see legacy PCI expansion slots have been killed off on these ones (although do make an appearance on some lesser boards that if seen on the web). Also note a lack of mATX Gaming board and of course an orange+black overclcoking option or two as per previous chipsets which I can't wait to see and which are surely coming.

Looks like all of them apart from the UD5 have 2x m.2 slots. Wonder if they are all ultra speeds this time round from GB.

I personally think the Asrock Extreme 7 is the nicest looking board so far, might have to try and pull together some pennies for an upgrade to build an editing machine. Be interesting to compare z170 to x99.

Do quite like their flagship model.. God only knows how much it will be though.

Prefer the look of the UD boards in Tha lineup. The G series look a bit over the top. Cracking good boards I suspect though.

They are some very nice looking boards. I think the budget one looks best though to be honest

I think the ultra-durables look better than the gaming boards, so I suspect I'll be getting one of them for white, black and yellow/gold build when skylake comes out.

Any board that isn't white or red and black

ANY BOARD

its so annoying that motherboard manufacturers have gone away from the stealth look. now everyone and his dog is doing red and black

HalfBakedJake said:

Any board that isn't white or red and black

ANY BOARD

its so annoying that motherboard manufacturers have gone away from the stealth look. now everyone and his dog is doing red and black

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^

mATX please.
Oh wait, but if the Skylake release date comes at same time of new case from Parvum then...

why do they always put the pci-e x4 at the bottom? For multi card setups, would it not be better to put a x16 at the top (as normal), and another x16 furthest away at the bottom to create a nice big space in between for sli/crossfire?

I can feel a new build coming along. That gaming G1 board is just gorgeous

It must be something to do with the way the board gets power or something? I don't know.

I just noticed most of them have twin M.2 slots, wonder if they are the turbo version like on the MSI board that can be put into Raid0 for close to 64gb/s

Not sure about the killer NICs, I'd probably prefer intel for a gaming board.

HazardO said:

Not sure about the killer NICs, I'd probably prefer intel for a gaming board.

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Couldn't agree more, my experience with them have always been horrendous

NMBlack said:

I think the ultra-durables look better than the gaming boards, so I suspect I'll be getting one of them for white, black and yellow/gold build when skylake comes out.

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Agree that G1 board looks terrible for people over the age of 12.

One of the best boards I've had was the gigabyte sniper, but man that was ugly, why put ammo magazines on a mobo..... Hope they fired whoever did that!

The z97 and z170 boards all seem ugly and slimmed down features wise.
Where's all the good quality heatsinks and copper pcb's ? to me all these boards look like bottom end boards for a medium to high price ? they look flimsy and cheap.

What happened to mid range boards having dual lan ports as standard for example ? also they seem to be still messing up the design of the spacing and especially pciex1 slots, I've never used a pciex1 slot for my soundcard I always used the bottom gpu slot because the spacing and clearance is never enough.

Just feels like they are reducing the quality of the parts and capacitors but keeping the prices the same.

Do they even have dual bios and bios profile saving ability ? ddr4 seems overpriced as well so no upgrade for me I will never pay more than £40-£50 for 8gb ram.
Sorry to be a moany old git but until ddr4 2x 4gb = £40-£50 I shant be upgrading to it.

They have messed up here people are more savvy now they aren't going to pay these silly prices for DDR4 for no performance gain.

I quite like the look of the boards, still tempted to upgrade but will wait for proper reviews and pricing.

G1 looks the biz, but I'm damned if I'll ever buy a gigabyte board again.

And are those wc pch sinks?

C64 said:

The z97 and z170 boards all seem ugly and slimmed down features wise.
Where's all the good quality heatsinks and copper pcb's ? to me all these boards look like bottom end boards for a medium to high price ? they look flimsy and cheap.

What happened to mid range boards having dual lan ports as standard for example ? also they seem to be still messing up the design of the spacing and especially pciex1 slots, I've never used a pciex1 slot for my soundcard I always used the bottom gpu slot because the spacing and clearance is never enough.

Just feels like they are reducing the quality of the parts and capacitors but keeping the prices the same.

Do they even have dual bios and bios profile saving ability ? ddr4 seems overpriced as well so no upgrade for me I will never pay more than £40-£50 for 8gb ram.
Sorry to be a moany old git but until ddr4 2x 4gb = £40-£50 I shant be upgrading to it.

They have messed up here people are more savvy now they aren't going to pay these silly prices for DDR4 for no performance gain.

Click to expand...

The PCBs have 2oz of copper in them, its part of their ultra durable 4/5 spec, yes they have dual BIOS and the ability to save BIOS profiles to a USB stick for example.

The capacitors are Nippon chemicon and super long life and high quality.

Certainly not flimsy either