A little late but I guess there’s still a market for Kaby Lakes …
GIGABYTE rolled out the Aorus Z270X Gaming 8 motherboard, positioned between its high-end Aorus Z270X Gaming 7, and enthusiast-segment Aorus Z270X Gaming 9. You get most of the connectivity features of the Gaming 9 board, while getting the CPU VRM and overclocking features of the Gaming 7. Unlike the Gaming 7, which is based on a souped-up variant of the Gaming 5 PCB, the new Gaming 8 is based on a new PCB design not shared with any other model. Built in the ATX form-factor, the Z270X Gaming 8 draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors, conditioning it for the CPU with a 10-phase VRM, cooled by an air+liquid heatsink made by Bitspower, which you can plumb to your liquid cooling loop.
Expansion slots include four PCI-Express gen 3.0 x16, from which the top three are wired to the CPU, in an x16/NC/NC or x8/x8/NC or x8/x4/x4 configuration depending on how you populated them, while the fourth slot is x4, wired to the Z270 PCH. Two other x1 slots make for the rest of the expansion. Storage connectivity includes two each of 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, and U.2 ports; and six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, from which four convert to two 16 Gb/s SATA-Express connectors. Networking includes two 1 GbE wired interfaces, from which one is driven by an Intel i219-V controller, and the other by a Killer E2500, which together with the Killer WLAN AC-1535 module, make up Killer DoubleShot Pro. The WLAN module supports 802.11 ac at speeds of up to 867 Mbps, and Bluetooth 4.1.
The Aorus Z270X Gaming 8 features the same grade of onboard audio as the more expensive Z270X Gaming 9, consisting of a Creative Sound Core3D audio controller, two JRC NJM2114 and one TI Burr Brown OPA2134 OPAMPs, and Creative SoundBlaster ZxRi drivers. You get a 40 Gb/s Thunderbolt 3 port, with internal DisplayPort wiring. USB connectivity includes two 10 Gb/s USB 3.1 ports, from which one is type-C, and ten USB 3.0 ports, from which four are via headers. The board is studded with RGB multi-color LEDs all over, and features multiple RGB headers, controlled with GIGABYTE RGB Fusion software. Its overclocking features are on-par with the Gaming 7, although onboard OC controls are closer in function to those of the Gaming 9. Available now, the Aorus Z270X Gaming 8 is expected to be priced at USD $399
