Posted on Tuesday, January 03 2017 @ 21:45 CET by Thomas De Maesschalck
Lots of new Intel Z270 based motherboards from ASUS! This includes the ROG Maximus IX Extreme, ROG Maximus IX Formula,
ROG Maximus IX Code,
ROG Maximus IX Apex,
ROG Maximus IX Hero,
ROG Strix Z270E Gaming,
ROG Strix Z270F Gaming,
ROG Strix Z270H Gaming,
ROG Strix Z270G Gaming and ROG Strix Z270I Gaming! It's too much to write something meaningful about this whole lot to so you can check out the full details at
at ASUS.
Before we get into that, it makes sense to quickly discuss what the Z270 chipset offers over its predecessor, the Z170. The backend DMI bandwidth is identical (PCIe X4 Gen 3), with a max theoretical bandwidth of 40 Gbps (32 Gbps effective, due to addressing overhead). There are changes on the front end of the chipset, though, with Z270 getting a total of 30 high-speed IO lanes, versus the 26 of Z170. Both platforms can reassign the same number of lanes to storage devices, but due to having fewer resources, enabling an M.2 X4 slot will cost you two SATA ports on Z170. In comparison, you can use an M.2 slot with a X4 PCIe SSD on Z270, without sacrificing SATA ports. Not a big change by any means, but one that adds a tad more flexibility for storage configurations.
