Package and Product Photos
The C7Z270-CG comes in an interesting box. It has quite fresh design what is not so common on the computer hardware market.
Inside the box we will find all what is required for installation so the manual, drivers DVD, IO shield, four SATA cables and SLI bridge.
Drivers/software DVD is helpful for the first installation or when we don’t have access to the Internet but It’s recommended to download the latest drivers from manufacturer’s website.
Not many motherboards are green/black what can be interesting for modders. Most gaming motherboards are red/black what is already boring because most brands are using the same schemes for their products series.
The C7Z270-CG layout is not much different from other high-end motherboards based on the Intel Z270 chipset. We can find six PCIE slots – three x16 and three x1. There are four DIMMs where we can install 64GB RAM. We can also find two M.2 sockets, six SATAIII ports and two U.2 PCIe x4 3.0 sockets. U.2 connectors are more popular in workstation and server motherboards and are supporting high performance SSD.
We can create RAID on SATA and M.2 ports what is also nothing unusual if we compare it to other higher series motherboards but still counts as RAID is more popular recently even in more typical home computers.
As most good motherboards designed for gaming and overclocking, also Supermicro C7Z270-CG has power and reset buttons onboard. There is also diagnostic display which is showing AMI BIOS/UEFI codes. Pretty handy when we don’t know why something isn’t working right.
On the back there are Intel/ASMedia USB 3.0/3.1 ports, PS/2, HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI, Intel 219v Ethernet and RealTek audio outputs. All what we may need as even PS/2 is sometimes required when we install OS without USB drivers. Even though it’s a gaming motherboard and most gamers are using Windows then we can’t forget about all other users.
Worth to mention is that back panel is supporting HDMI 2.0 to provide higher maximum screen resolution while some competitive motherboards are using older standard.
On the PCB we will also find USB, COM and front panel audio headers. A lot of things which most users won’t use but others find handy.
Audio itself is provided by RealTek ALC1150 codec but there is also an amplifier – TIOPA1612, which is improving sound quality.
Under the chipset heatsink are white LEDs. There are no RGB stripes or other flashy add-ons. Hard to say if it’s advantage or disadvantage. I guess it depends on the user preferences.
PCB looks clean. In use are digital PWMs. There are 6 power phases for the CPU and 3 for the IGP. There is also a single phase for memory. VRM look great for overclocking and are able to support power draw much higher than that of a single CPU. Motherboard is supporting processors up to 160W TDP but I wouldn’t be surprised to see fully stable work at much above 200W.
Since we know what we will test then let’s move to the next page of this review to take a look at our test results.
