ASUS LGA 1151 STRIX Z270E GAMING Intel Z270 ATX Motherboard - Black

Fantastic board yet again from ASUS!This board feels premium high-end, and in relation to the entire range of Intel 1151 (Skylake and Kaby Lake) chipsets and boards available it certainly is high end, considering it's based on the mainstream flagship Z270 chipset. However, this board is really only mid-range in the ASUS line up, with the ROG boards considered their top tier, yet the Prime Z270-A is still an excellent board for the price point.It has all the essential features these days, such as SLI/CrossFire support, two NVMe M.2 in 4x PCIE mode, of which one is backwards compatible with SATA mode, and support for the higher echelons of DDR4 fequencies out there depending on how good your CPUs memory controller is. The board also has a few little touches in particular that I really liked, which I wouldn't have expected to find on this board , considering it's not a Strix or ROG product:-- Firstly, both Type-C and Type-A USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbit/s ports on the back panel. Some boards advertise USB 3.1 capability, but are actually referring to USB 3.1 Gen 1 which tops out at 5Gbit/s like USB 3.0 does. This board offers Gen 2 at 10Gbit/s.-- Secondly, there are physical switches on the board for enabling CPU over-voltage, and RAM XMP. These switches must be set to the 'on' position for the relevant settings to be selectable in the UEFI. There is also the 'MemOK" function, which is very useful for compatibility with certain RAM modules.-- Finally, the board has Aura RGB support built-in which is nice, even though I'm not on the RGB train yet. I know, I'm missing out on crucial FPS without it, but I'll survive!The system I built with this board was a breeze to get up and running, and the legendary ASUS UEFI BIOS had a lot to do with that! I got my 7700K clocked to 5.2Ghz at around 1.355v, with my RAM running at 3200Mhz fully stable over a 48 hour stress test. It was so easy with this board! I could have pushed the CPU even further, as it still has some headroom. I think 5.2Ghz is perfectly fine for now though, that's a crazy clock speed, and more than I expected.An all round excellent board at an excellent price. It does lack some of the bells and whistles that ROG boards offer, but if you can live without those, then you won't regret your purchase!

Bought this as part of my new pc build(specs/stats below)which is now running at light-speed with this Motherboard. Impressive bios with many advanced features in a simplified layout, like over clocking & tweaking etc(if that's your thing), idiot-proof bios updating which is a breeze, feels solid & well built, so far it's working flawlessly, I've updated the bios with the ASUS software that comes with it(Thermal Radar Core+, EZ Update), you can control fan speeds, check board & cpu temps etc. I honestly cannot find anything critical or negative to say about this board at all, if I found something I'd say so, it does more than what I expected & the performance is just absolutely reliably solid!. I've also noticed a significant reduction & improvement with my in-game M/s latency while online gaming on various games since I've installed this board.Definitely worth a look if you are thinking about an upgrade at a reasonable price. I'm well happy with it, Thumbs up for this board from me! :)For those that may be interested this is what I have & get with this mobo/build:My specs: Case: Antec-900, CPU: i7 [email protected] with a Corsair H80i V2 cooler, RAM: 2xCorsair 8Gb DDR4@3200Mhz, GPU: 1xEVGA GTX1070 8Gb Founders Edition, HDD: 1xSamsung EVO 850 SSD 500Gb & 2xSeagte 250Gb, 1xAsus DVD re-writer, PSU: OCZ-ZS750W-UK ZS Series 750W 80+ Bronze with 135mm Fan.My temps: CPU 29c idle&55c full-load, MOBO 19c idle&26c full-load, PCH 28c idle&35c full-load, G-card 26c idle&54c full-load. Nothing OC'd!(Full load is me playing Ghost Recon Wildlands 1920x1080@1080p Ultra specs/everything cranked up to the max to push the G-card,no lag at all!!)EDIT:10/4/17:I've noticed for my motherboard(above)that the BIOS version ASUS has on their website(&via the software)for download version 0906 causes system instability with my board, an OS initiated shutdown puts my PC into a state where for as long as power is connected the system will not boot back up(the fans come on,the monitor goes into standby), only on switching off at the wall or PSU switch then rebooting will the system boot, also removing my USB Sound-card then plugging back in causes an immediate BSOD, none of these issues occur in the previous BIOS 0801 version to which I've re-flashed this motherboard back to, I've contacted ASUS to alert them of this fault with their release & as yet have had no response other than a generic auto response, so be warned if flashing the bios, for now avoid 0906.

I don't know what people are saying about being a pain to do a BIOS update or having problems with an i7 7700K out of the box? I wrote to Asus and asked whether it does come supporting the mentioned chip out of the box regardless of bios version and they confirmed that it did. So I bought it and I'm glad I did. It's a great board and love the RGB lighting too. As for updating the BIOS - I've never done that to a motherboard before in my life but I went into Asus site, downloaded it to USB and updated it no problem. Quick, simple, first time. So this has been a great no hassle buy and build for me and I'm sure it will be for you too.

I have been after motherboard like this for years since the p67 sabertooth but they have been out of my price range till now. The Z270 mk1 is a fantastic mobo the aisuite 3 software is the clear winner for thermal management though not at the moment thanks to Microsoft metldown/spectre patch. I have my fans set in the UFEI Bios instead waiting for Asus and Microsoft to fix the issue with the latest patch. The 40mm fan (bought separately) really makes a difference for the VRM. If thermals and stability are what you are looking for then TUF series mobos are worth the purchase.

I'm sure this is a great motherboard, but beware if you are fitting an i7-7700K chip. Despite the website stating that their MOBO is ready for the i7, the BIOS are in fact out of date, it comes shipped with 0505 BIOS - to work with the i7 you need 0604 BIOS. If it is a new build, like mine then you are up the creek without a paddle because you cannot update the BIOS because it will not boot up. Then of course ASUS product service gives a 48 hour response time, if you try to call them, they redirect you to the website and then hang up on you.Thanks ASUS!