News Leaked Z270 Motherboards

Guru3d has released a bunch of photos for the Z270 motherboards I assume will be released at CES in two weeks' time. There's only one mITX offering on the list which looks okay. Looks like more RGB LED all around, which isn't a surprise. Also looks like a few companies are trying out SLIGHTLY varied color schemes which is nice.

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/in...hotos-from-asrockgigabyte-and-msi-leaked.html

 

[|||]

There are pictures elsewhere of the ASRock Fatal1ty mITX board. I'm curious if it will support Thunderbolt on the mITX board.

 

[Necere]

Really now, PCI slots? On boards with enthusiast-level chipsets? In 2017? There must be something I'm missing here, because I cannot see how that in any way makes sense.

 

[jeshikat]

On a B-series chipset or even H-series I don't mind all that much, but on Z270 it is truly mind-boggling to see PCI slots.

 

[FCase]

I don't see PCI slots. Those are metal wrapped PCIe lanes. You can just make out the black card locks in the back.

FCase

 

[|||]

I don't see PCI slots. Those are metal wrapped PCIe lanes. You can just make out the black card locks in the back.

Bottom slot is PCI

 

[jeshikat]

A few of the Gigabyte boards in the link in the OP have two PCI slots.

 

[FCase]

Oh wow. That is shocking

FCase

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

That is still useful to use a legacy PCI professional sound card. Almost nothing available in PCIe, except very expensive Lynx, Digigram, etc.

 

[Therandomness]

A: Why is PCI still a thing?
B: Yay, another 'new' architecture from Intel that'll have minor improvements over the previous one.

 

[Phuncz]

That is still useful to use a legacy PCI professional sound card. Almost nothing available in PCIe, except very expensive Lynx, Digigram, etc.

If Gigabyte is targeting that niche, they could just as well target a more prevalent niche, the SFF crowd with an mSTX board and proper mATX.

Especially since Kaby Lake seems to be little more than a relabeled Sky Lake. The USB type C header isn't even going to see wide adoption. If I would need to build a new Intel system now, I'd probably go for a Sky Lake or Haswell archtiecture, much more options, more mature thanks to updates and cheaper to buy with the second hand market flooding it.

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

Yup, not excited at all by kaby lake.

 

[Josh | NFC]

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

This looks so late 90's

 

[Phuncz]

I'll wait for the Xen part of Black Mesa

 

[GuilleAcoustic]

I so want a low power socketable i7 with Iris PRO iGPU (35-45W), like the Xeon E3-1500 series, but LGA instead of BGA. Transistor is mostly smooth on HD4600, but some area fall below 24 fps ... which affects the experience deeply.

 

[stree]

Think I will be looking at Zen before any more Intel.

 

[Phuncz]

Yeah me too, I'm not going to give money for Intel's lack of progress.

 

[CC Ricers]

If I was going to upgrade my motherboard, I'd be going with a Skylake board, by Gigabyte for better Hackintosh compatibility. But Ryzen on a AM4 ITX board also sounds exciting.

 

[Kmpkt]

Yeah me too, I'm not going to give money for Intel's lack of progress.

I hope Zen kicks the shit out of Intel for no other reason than to punish them for what I'm sure is deliberately slow performance gains from generation to generation. My one fear is that Intel's R&D is so far that they'll drop a 20% performance gain in 18 months and AMD will have nothing to respond with.