The ASRock Z270 Supercarrier Motherboard Review: 4-way SLI and 5 Gigabit Ethernet on Kaby Lake
by E. Fylladitakis on September 29, 2017 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- SLI
- Aquantia
- Z270
The ASRock Z270 Supercarrier Test Bed
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency/monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.
The ASRock Z270 Supercarrier has the multi-core acceleration enabled by default, plus an extra CPU multipler for good measure. The FCLK frequency is set to 800 MHz by default as well and all current/temperature limiters are enabled and set to their default settings. The only safety setting that is disabled by default is the reliability stress restrictor.
Test Setup | |
Processor | Intel Core i7-7700K (ES, Retail Stepping), 91W, $340 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 4.2 GHz (4.5 GHz Turbo) |
Motherboards | ASRock Z270 Supercarrier |
Cooling | Alphacool Eisbaer 240 |
Power Supply | Corsair AX1200i Platinum PSU |
Memory | G.Skill DDR4-2400 C15 2x16 GB 1.2V |
Memory Settings | XMP @ 2400 |
Video Cards | MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB (1150/1202 Boost) |
Hard Drive | Crucial MX200 1TB |
Case | Open Test Bed |
Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit SP1 |
Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX200 SSDs. Crucial stepped up to the plate as our benchmark list grows larger with newer benchmarks and titles, and the 1TB MX200 units are strong performers. Based on Marvell's 88SS9189 controller and using Micron's 16nm 128Gbit MLC flash, these are 7mm high, 2.5-inch drives rated for 100K random read IOPs and 555/500 MB/s sequential read and write speeds. The 1TB models we are using here support TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 (eDrive) encryption and have a 320TB rated endurance with a three-year warranty.
Further Reading: AnandTech's Crucial MX200 (250 GB, 500 GB & 1TB) Review
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU. The AX1200i was the first power supply to offer digital control and management via Corsair's Link system, but under the hood it commands a 1200W rating at 50C with 80 PLUS Platinum certification. This allows for a minimum 89-92% efficiency at 115V and 90-94% at 230V. The AX1200i is completely modular, running the larger 200mm design, with a dual ball bearing 140mm fan to assist high-performance use. The AX1200i is designed to be a workhorse, with up to 8 PCIe connectors for suitable four-way GPU setups. The AX1200i also comes with a Zero RPM mode for the fan, which due to the design allows the fan to be switched off when the power supply is under 30% load.
Further Reading: AnandTech's Corsair AX1500i Power Supply Review
Thank you to G.Skill for providing us with memory. G.Skill has been a long-time supporter of AnandTech over the years, for testing beyond our CPU and motherboard memory reviews. We've reported on their high capacity and high-frequency kits, and every year at Computex G.Skill holds a world overclocking tournament with liquid nitrogen right on the show floor.
Further Reading: AnandTech's Memory Scaling on Haswell Review, with G.Skill DDR3-3000
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Dr. Swag - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
You guys are reviewing so many z270 boards all of a sudden, but it feels a bit like a waste with z370 just around the corner, just saying.shabby - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
Ya it's kinda funny how the z270 I'll suffer eof so quickly... classic intel.shabby - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
Derp eolddriver - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
It has 5 gbit lan... cuz the poor platform doesn't have enough lanes to drive more...Timing is understandable, orders from intel hq came to push as much eol products as possible now, because pretty soon they will sell at a significant discount.
saratoga4 - Saturday, September 30, 2017 - link
DMI 3.0 is 32 GBit/s, so 5Gbit ethernet can easily go on the chipset PCIe switch. Which goes to show just how far behind everything else wired ethernet has fallen.Wwhat - Thursday, October 5, 2017 - link
You are right, the tech world really needs to massively go to higher because 1gb internet is all over the place now and they can't go higher because the average consumer would have issues plugging that into existing networking equipment.I suppose they could include a modem with USB-C connector instead of LAN, but you can't assume every USB-C device actually has USB3.0 or higher speeds, sigh.
Plus many want their own router so it would be nice if routers on the market now were a bit forwards looking and did more than 1gbit.
And meanwhile LTE and such reach 1gbit when in fact data prices are such that Joe Average has no use for more than 50mbit or so.
The whole thing seems poorly thought out.
Notmyusualid - Sunday, October 8, 2017 - link
More 'ddriver BS' - 5Gb/s LAN is seen as a cost-effective alternative to 10Gb/s NICs, that are still expensive to buy / implement.There is tons more connectivity from the DMI than is required by all the NICs on this board - as stated by others.
Please seek professional psychological help.
SharpEars - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
That's right, I want to invest >$200 in a soon to be obsolete motherboard.Gothmoth - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
you may not but anandtech likes to get all this intel money they spend on PR.Morawka - Friday, September 29, 2017 - link
Hey i just sold my z89 Asus Maximus VI Extreme motherboard on ebay for $300, it's not that far of a stretch. a man needs what a man needs.