HWM Singapore — May 2017

GIGABYTE AORUS Z270X GAMING 9

AT A GLANCE

POWER PHASES

22-phase

PCIE SLOTS

4x PCIe 3.0 x16; 2x

PCIe2.0 x1

STORAGE

8x SATA 6Gbps; 3x

SATAExpress; 2x M.2;

2x U.2

PRICE

$839

As far as ȵ agship boards go, the

Gigabyte Aorus Z270X Gaming 9 is

crammed with just about any feature

you need, and then some. Gigabyte has

cranked the knob up to 11 in all the

key areas such as storage connectivity,

networking, and overclocking. The result

however, is a prohibitive price tag.

It boasts a whopping 22-phase voltage

regulator for high overclocks, but we

should note that we had to set the CPU

Vcore load-line calibration to Extreme in

order to get the most out of it.

There’s support for up to 4-way SLI/

CrossFire as well, courtesy of a PEX 8747

lane switcher. However, as with the

ASRock board, this is more a nice-to-

have feature rather than a truly useful

one, as four-card setups are rare.

In addition, you get eight SATA 6Gbps

connectors, two M.2 sockets, and two

U.2 ports. The latter an above-and-

beyond inclusion on Gigabyte’s part, as

most boards don’t even have one U.2

port. That said, it looks like Gigabyte

clearly wanted to cover all the bases.

However, there’s a complicated web

of bandwidth sharing among all these

ports, so you won’t be able to populate

them all at once.

On the networking front, the

motherboard packs three Killer Network

controllers – two Killer E2500 Gigabit

Ethernet and one Killer Wireless-AC 1535

• that work together to prioritize and
  assign the most demanding data packets
  to the lowest latency connection.
  The audio solution is fairly impressive
  as well, comprising a Creative Sound
  Blaster ZxRi chip, three upgradeable
  op-amps, and even a pair of gain
  switches for headphones with di΍ erent
  impedances.
  One particularly useful feature is
  the two LED panels that, other than
  showing you the debug codes, can be
  programmed to display status readings
  such as CPU temperature.
  However, all of this comes with a
  slight size penalty, and the Gaming 9
  is just over a centimeter wider than
  standard ATX boards. Still, it should ȴ t
  in most ATX cases and requires just the
  same nine stando΍ s.

8)78

The swappable overlay here can be

replaced with one with a di΍ erent

pattern.

You’ll ȴ nd a total of two U.2

connectors on board.

Supports up

to 4-way SLI/

CrossFire.

Higher idle power

consumpঞ on.

Expensive.

70 +:0 | MAY 2017