![]() It is amazing to see how well audio has ramped up over the standard Realtek codecs lately. The motherboard makes use of the ROG SupremeFX 2015 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC ( ESS ES9023P DAC) and TI RC4580 2VRMS audio OP AMPs. Underneath the shield is the audio solution. The backside has an LED array as well, these however are in RED only, kind of a miss if you ask me (them not being color configurable). It looks pretty nice, I'll show you that on a photo on the next page. Once activated, a color configurable RGB LED will create an aura of light from that heatsink. The PCH (Intel Z170 chipset) chip is covered by a nice heatsink, shield almost. Overall a nice design, aesthetically pleasing to the eye as well. The board has nice dark capacitors, we can see the diagnostic LED here (displays status/error codes and, in the OS, the package temperature of the processor). Again, XMP 2.0 must be supported, we'll show you this petite setup running at 21 MHz. You can install a maximum of 64 GB in total. If you activate a compatible DIMM kit with XMP 2.0 profile in the BIOS, your memory will be automatically configured for you at its maximum clock speed and recommended voltage. You will get four DIMM slots offering support for dual-channel DDR4 memory up to even 3866 MHz (OC). The weird looking SATA connector to the left is a 2 x SATA Express port, and fairly useless. There's also a U.2 connector but, together with the SATA Express connectors, we find these obsolete and rather useless. There are many USB 3.0 and 3.1 ports available through internal motherboard connectors. Included is a M.2 PCI Express slot tied to a PCI Express 3.0 lane configuration of x4, giving the port a full 32 GB/sec performance. ![]() With an added ASMedia ASM1061 controller two more have been added, albeit these offer slightly worse performance (we'll demonstrate later on). The Z170 chipset brings six Intel chipset based SATA 6 Gb/s storage ports to the motherboard.
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