We’ve covered the 200-series boards from most of the big motherboard companies, but now we’re taking a quick look at EVGA’s offering, the Z270 Stinger.
The Z170 Stinger was pretty lackluster, it looked nice, but didn’t have the features to justify its launch price of $199 (though it’s dropped precipitously in price since). The Z270 version though is an already big improvement in that regard by including more features and it is listed for $170 on EVGA’s website. The board has 4x SATA ports, 1x U.2, Intel NIC, 802.11ac wireless, USB 3.1 Type-A and Type-C, and a PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 SSD slot on the backside.
Some of EVGA’s marketing material says the USB 3.1 is running of the Z270 PCH which is incorrect, the Intel 200-series chipsets do not support USB 3.1. Peering at the picture above though does not show a Thunderbolt 3 controller, so I believe those ports are off a typical ASMedia controller.
The USB 3.0 header placement and inclusion of a U.2 port annoy me, but otherwise this looks like a pretty solid Z270 Mini-ITX motherboard from EVGA.
Thoughts? Discuss them in the forum here.
