News Gigabyte 170-series motherboards

This offering is from the Ultra durable 3 line up, so one of Gigabyte’s more budget-friendly ranges. All of these motherboards support DDR4 RAM only as opposed to 2x DDR3 DIMM and 2x DDR4 DIMM; which is a much better idea. They all also support the new M.2 standard for SSD’s and offer two-way Crossfire/ SLi graphics card support. Along with those features, they will all feature the standard Gigabyte motherboard offerings such as UEFI BIOS and the rest of the Gigabyte software.

http://www.eteknix.com/gigabyte-reveal-intel-170-chipset-motherboards-computex-2015/

The GA-Z170M-D3H looks pretty nice: two USB 3.0 headers, right-angle Sata, M.2 out from under the video card, but why not one but two PCI slots?!

 

[Phuncz]

Two PCI-slots in 2015 ? Is this an old ATX board ? My G45 chipset socket 775 mATX board has more PCIe slots than this board. Why not just leave it blank instead of wasting money on two useless slots.

 

[jeshikat]

And unless Intel added back PCI support to the 100-series chipset (unlikely) they have to use a 3rd-party controller at additional cost to do this.

 

[Vittra]

Choices like this and BIOS/UEFI inconsistencies is why I can't take Gigabyte seriously.

 

[Jeffinslaw]

Please tell me this won't be only mATX board for Z170 from Gigabyte. Please please please. Who still uses PCI anyways?? I know there are PCI sound cards but besides that, what else is there? Nothing.

 

[jeshikat]

The H170 surprisingly has all PCIe: http://cdn.eteknix.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/11358889_939976346055156_23336270_n-800x600.jpg

Seems backwards.

 

[Phuncz]

We're probably just not getting the immense marketing that's behind this, maybe they're bringing back PCI for SSD's, for that blazing fast 133MB/s transfer rate !

 

[Vittra]

Gigabyte posted some pics of one of their ATX board pics on Facebook. I actually saw them earlier from windwithme's photos.

https://www.facebook.com/GIGABYTEmotherboards

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...indwithme-computex-2015-product-showgirl.html

Post #2.

Dual PCI-E 3.0 x4 M.2 ports. Interesting.

 

[Phuncz]

I don't find ATX very interesting, so much space to put so much crap that most people won't even use half of.
But it's interesting to see how much stuff they crammed on this board:

4x PCIe x16 slots (I'm guessing all are x8 so 32 lanes)
3x PCIe x1 slots
3x SATA Express (two lanes each?)
2x M.2 x4 lanes
2x Gbit NICs (PCIe 3.0 x1 I'd guess)
8+4 USB 3.0 ports (2 more than Z170 has)
2 USB 3.1 ports (PCIe 3.0 x1 I'd guess)
10 SATA ports (4 more than Z170 has)

So that would total:
Large PCIe slots: 16 lanes (x16 from CPU in 8/8/0/0 or 8/4/4/0 I'd guess)
Small PCIe slots: 3 lanes
SATA Express: 6 lanes
M.2 slots: 8 lanes
Gbit NICs: 1 lane
USB 3.0 ports: 1 lane
USB 3.1 ports: 1 lane (unless 3.1g2)
SATA ports: 2 lanes
Sound: 1 lane

TOTAL: 39 lanes

So if the PCIe x1 slots are all disabled by using the x16 slot above it, you're at 36-38 lanes. So I'd guess the SATA Express and M.2 slots will also disable the other. It's funny that they choose to include 3 SATA Express slots while they are basically not going to see the light of day (or shouldn't, atleast).

 

[Vittra]

While ATX will never allow for cases small enough to be considered true, it still has it's place, especially on the enthusiast platform where someone may be looking to build one rig to serve many purposes. Whether or not that is a wise decision is another matter. I do quite like my FT05 and it's size I have to admit, though it's execution could have been a bit better in some regards. It isn't much bigger than the S340 I've found, since the S340 doesn't include feet in it's dimensions.

I haven't attempted to understand the layout of the Gigabyte boards as of yet because it still isn't very clear on whether the CPU will have x16 or x20 PCI-E 3.0 lanes. Even the chipset has not seen any firm confirmation with respect to how many PCI-E 3.0 lanes it will receive (x20 or x8?). The numbers seem to add up in favour of 16x CPU 20x chipset, unless there's a PLX chip lurking there on the board under the mountains of plastic.

I too am surprised that they have pushed so many Sata Express connectors. This tech was clearly DOA and was being spouted as such when it was first shown (NVMe is coming!!), so I hope this doesn't mean we are going to see a slew of Sata Express drives announced in August at the expense of M.2/U.2.

 

[jeshikat]

so I hope this doesn't mean we are going to see a slew of Sata Express drives announced in August at the expense of M.2/U.2.

Doubtful, many M.2 and PCIe SSDs announced at Computex, don't think I saw a single Sata Express drive.

 

[Vittra]

Hopefully that remains the case. We'll know for sure after the Flash Memory Summit in August, I suppose.

 

[Phuncz]

Eurgh, if a single SATA Express drive pops up, I'll be having nightmares how it somehow crushes M.2 and U.2 in sales and forces us to use bulky cables with insanely stupid connectors. Seriously, who ever thought that it was a good thing to have these ridiculous connectors on motherboards ? What's wrong with SATA and M.2 or U.2 ? In x years they'll just omit SATA and be done with it. It's not like P-ATA and S-ATA needed "Serial P-ATA Plus" or something stupid to work.