The Z170X-Ultra Gaming is a little understated in an almost entirely black look but comes to life when powered on with numerous red LED’s dotted across its landscape. It fits the gamer aesthetic in that regard, but it pushes the expectations on what gamer performance is by providing Thunderbolt 3 support as well as a remarkably flexible high-speed triple NVMe strorage combining a built-in U.2 header, M.2 slot and a PCI-E x4 slot. [sc:sponsor sponsor=”Gigabyte” product_link=”http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5481 ov” product_name=”Z170x-Ultra Gaming” product_price_link=”http://amzn.to/2aYXap4″ product_price=”$169.99″ ]The Z170X-Ultra Gaming motherboard is part of Gigabyte’s G1 Gaming line, sporting a black box with red theme that is a reference to the red LED clad board inside. All the promotional information are in the rear outlining some of the Z170X-Ultra Gaming motherboard’s unique features.  Aside from the essential drive disc, installation guide, manual and IO shield, Gigabyte includes four SATA cables (two of which have one 90-degree end), a Gigabyte G-connector for the front IO, a dual SLI ribbon cable, a G1 gaming case sticker, a G1 Gaming Do Not Disturb door hanger, a pair of G1 Gaming velcro cable management strips, and storage sticker labels for the cables. I’m surprised drivers still come bundled in disc form. Biostar seems to be the only one that actually puts the drivers/software on a USB drive which is a lot more convenient for installation. The Gigabyte Z170X-Ultra Gaming motherboard uses an ATX form factor measuring 305 x 244mm with a matte black 4-layer PCB and brushed aluminum black anodized heatsinks. The only accents in the motherboard come in the form of the shielding on the DIMM and PCI-E x16 slots. On the right side edge is an obvious strip of LED and there are more outlining the audio area, on the VRM area, the PCI-E sockets and the DIMM slots. When we get your report, we'll check if the review meets our Community guidelines. If it doesn't, we'll remove it. Sorry we couldn't load the review Thank you for your feedback Sorry, there was an errorPlease try again later.
Top reviews from the United StatesThere was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.Reviewed in the United States on March 9, 2017 This is really a slick little motherboard. Has more features than I needed, but definitely had all the features that I was looking for. Supports the i7 quad core CPU that I had, running at 4Ghz. The CPU has 16 PCIe lanes, and the on board chipset has 20 more, giving me a total of 36 lanes. I needed 16 for my Nvidia GTX1080 card, and 4 more for the M.2 hard drive that I used. The rest are for the future. Leaving me 16 more lanes. That is a lot of PCIe power. I have 16GB of 2133Mhz DDR4 memory in this. It is just blazing fast. As mentioned above, this thing has two M.2 hard drive slots between the x16 PCI slots, giving you the ability to use the latest in flash hard drive technology. These slots give the drive x4 PCIe throughput, and I am seeing 3.2GB/s write speed and 2GB/s write speed on my 512GB drive. That is crazy fast, much faster than the throughput of the best SATA/SAS in RAID. As for connectors, it has more than you could ask for. It has HDMI for the onboard video card in the CPU, however, I don't use this. But, for USB, it has TONS. It has USB2.0/3.0/3.1 USB Type C, and some other USB for direct access to some A2D converter? That is just on the back panel. Then, the motherboard has more USB connectors for the front of your case. It has 3 SATA Express ports on the back, and 6 SATA ports inside. That is more than you should ever need, and supports hardware RAID for the SATA and the M.2 drives. It has 2 channels of DDR memory, with two slots each, giving you incredible throughput. It has 7.1 channel surround sound, too. For a middle level motherboard they really packed it with features. One more cool thing to mention is the LED coloring on the motherboard. Around the edges are LEDs that I assume can be controlled. They just happen to match the color and pattern scheme that I am already using, so I didn't change them. It looks really slick. I have it sync'd to my liquid cooler, video card, and case. My computer looks like a work of art. PROS: This has pretty much every connection you could want, and many of each. Has support for SLI, all different types of USB, including the new Type C. Has tons of SATA including hardware raid. But, the best is the 36 lanes of PCIe when paired with the CPU. Plus, the two M.2 hard drive connectors give you mind blowing hard drive performance. My windows computer boots to password, after the BIOS screen, in 3.5 seconds. After the password I have full control of the machine, with no hourglass, after another 2-2.5 seconds. That is a cold boot, not a restore from sleep. CONS: What can I say? It has everything I need. Maybe it would be nice to have more RAM slots, but I believe it is limited by the CPU/Chipset. Really I have nothing bad I can say about this motherboard. 4 people found this helpful Report Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2016 Overall, this has been a very nice motherboard which I have no complaints about, thus far. I'll try and be as succinct and informative about it as possible, and also make the review accessible for system building newbies (such as myself). As far as aesthetics go, the MOBO is quite nice. It is predominantly black, but there's a red LED strip that runs along the "back" of it, along the PCIe slots. It extends about halfway up the board. Some software that comes with the board allows you to turn the LED on or off, or have it slowly strobe. The PCIes are red, and the DDR4RAM slots are alternating red/black/red/black. The 4 SATA cables it ships with are a nice silver, which, if the inside of your case is mostly black like mine, then it makes them easy to spot, but not gaudy. As expected for a modern MOBO of this caliber, it is PCIe x16-compatible. Perhaps not a distinct "pro", but important nevertheless. However, there is only one x16 slot; there is also an x8 and x4 slot, and 3 extension card slots (e.g., for WiFi adapters or whatever). If you're wanting to run SLI, you won't be reaping the benefits of x16; if you SLI between an x16 and x8 slot, for instance, you'll be throttled down to x8. (Apologies if this explanation is clumsy.) I'm personally running an EVGA GTX 970 FTW GPU in my x16 slot. The fan headers (basically, where you'll route your system's fans to) are located fairly conveniently, I suppose. There's one right below where the CPU is mounted, so it works well with Intel's fairly short fan cables. In addition to the CPU fan slot, there are 3 additional fan slots for the case's intake fan, exhaust fan, and front panel fan. If you want to mount extra fans, you'll run them through one of the USB headers on the MOBO, if you run all of the case fans from the MOBO. (In my situation, I have the front panel fan hooked up to a molex cable which connects directly to my power supply, so I have an extra SYS_FAN slot free). Which brings me to my next point: two easily-accessed USB 3.0 slots on the front-end of the MOBO, along with four more for the back panel. There is also a 3.1 Type-C slot on the back panel. There are 2 more less glamorous USB headers at the "bottom" of the MOBO, useful for hooking up front-panel stuff for your case (e.g., reset switch). Of course, it also includes 4 DDR4 slots (socket 1151), and you can dual-channel between the associated slots (1 and 3, and 2 and 4). If you're looking to use an M.2 SSD, it sports a 32 Gb/s M.2 header. Also, since it is a Z170X chipset, it is overclock-ready. I have no complaints about the BIOS, and all the necessary drivers and some useful start-up software (like a few months of Norton Antivirus) are packaged with it, as well. To see some of GIGABYTE's proprietary software which you have the option of using, look up GIGABYTE's APP Center. One person found this helpful Report Top reviews from other countries1.0 out of 5 stars Broken, every pin was bent on motherboard Reviewed in Canada on July 23, 2018 Broken, every pin was bent on motherboard 5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars Reviewed in Canada on March 4, 2018 Great quality, works perfect. 5.0 out of 5 stars Great motherboard for price, used for first-time gaming PC build Reviewed in Canada on August 6, 2017 Purchased this for a first time gaming PC build. I shopped around quite a bit and realized there are so many options to choose from, that you can easily find yourself in a black hole of motherboards trying to pick the right one. I highly recommend the use of PCpartpicker.com to ensure you select compatiable parts for your build. From there, I discovered this motherboard, which provides more than enough PCIe lanes, looks great, and matches my colour scheme. All you need to install is a screwdriver (I use a set specifically for PC-building), and the install was very easy for me. Clearly a high quality product- recommend to anyone. 5.0 out of 5 stars Great motherboard for price, used for first-time gaming PC build Reviewed in Canada on August 6, 2017 Purchased this for a first time gaming PC build. I shopped around quite a bit and realized there are so many options to choose from, that you can easily find yourself in a black hole of motherboards trying to pick the right one. I highly recommend the use of PCpartpicker.com to ensure you select compatiable parts for your build. From there, I discovered this motherboard, which provides more than enough PCIe lanes, looks great, and matches my colour scheme. All you need to install is a screwdriver (I use a set specifically for PC-building), and the install was very easy for me. Clearly a high quality product- recommend to anyone. Images in this review 5.0 out of 5 stars Una pequeña gran placa base. Reviewed in Spain on December 22, 2016 Placa Base brutal!!! De momento estoy muy contento y aún no la he exprimido al 100%. Montada con un Intel I5 6600k y Windows7 va todo rapidísimo. PROS: - Rendimiento increible - Hardware de sonido de gran calidad acompañado del Software de Creative - Ranuras para RAM y PCI-E robustas y de calidad - BIOS intuitiva. CONTRAS: - Puertos SATA colocados en posición horizontal pueden resultar inaccesibles en cajas de tamaño muy ajustado. - Instalar Windows 7 requiere descargar una aplicación de Gigabyte que parchea la ISO. Al no detectar los puertos USB ni SATA ni Ethernet tuve que usar Ubuntu para poder pasar los drivers del CD a otra partición del disco duro y así poder instalarlos despues en Windows7. - Tiene algo de coil whine que no llega a resultar molesto pero se escucha (se puede eliminar desactivando la opciones de ahorro de energía de la CPU) - La BIOS está en castellano pero mal traducida y con partes en otros idiomas y el CD de instalación de drivers te obliga a instalar software de Google aunque no lo vayas a utilizar. 5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent board Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 28, 2016 Great board, decent connectivity (u.2 and m.2, sata express). RAM works at 3000 out of the box at XMP profile. Eveything was good to go at default settings. Lots of LEDs, but can be disabled in bios. Build quality seems very good, the board feels very sturdy, looks good and the components seem decent. |
