discussion ASRock Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac Review

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Feature Testing: Onboard Audio

Feature Testing: Onboard Audio

Since fewer and fewer consumers seem to be buying discrete sound cards, the quality of a motherboard's onboard audio is now more important than ever. As such, we figured that it was worthwhile to take a closer look at the quality of the analog signal coming out of the Sound Blaster Cinema 3 onboard audio subsystem that has been outfitted to the Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac. As mentioned earlier, this model features the new Realtek ALC1220 codec, a proven Texas Instruments N5532 op-amp, Nichicon "Fine Gold" audio capacitors, and a cut-down PCB-level isolation line that should help protect from electromagnetic interference (EMI).

Since isolated results don't really mean much, but we have also included some numbers from the plethora of motherboards that we have previously reviewed. All of the Z170 models feature onboard audio solutions that are built around the Realtek ALC1150 codec, while the Z270 motherboards all feature the newer Realtek ALC1220 codec. While they may all have similar codecs, there are vastly different hardware implementations that feature different op-amps, headphone amplifiers, filtering capacitors, secondary components and layouts.

We are going to do this using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, since sound quality isn't really something that can be adequately explained with only numbers. To do the quantitative portion, we have turned to RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA), which the standard application for this type of testing.

Since all modern motherboards support very high quality 24-bit, 192kHz audio playback we selected that as the sample mode option. Basically, what this test does is pipe the audio signal from the front-channel output to the line-in input via a 3.5mm male to 3.5mm male mini-plug cable, and then RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) does the audio analysis. Obviously we disabled all software enhancements since they interfere with the pure technical performance that we are trying to benchmark.

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Proving once again how beneficial short electrical traces are, the tiny Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac puts its bigger brother to shame. Despite sharing the exact same components as the Gaming K6, this little wonder achieved better numbers almost across the board. When it comes to actual listening enjoyment, the sound quality was unimpeachable with a mix of Grado SR225i and Koss PortaPro headphones, Westone UM1 IEMs, and Logitech Z-5500 5.1 speakers. As we tend to repeat, we aren't experts in this area, but we suspect that your average user will likewise be perfectly satisfied with this motherboard's onboard audio capabilities.

 

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Feature Testing: M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4

Feature Testing: M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4

One of the big advancements of the previous Skylake/Z170 LGA1151 platform was the fact that it brought the M.2 slot to the mainstream. Not only did it make this new storage connector available at a more reasonable price, but it was now properly implemented too. While most first-gen X99 LGA2011-v3 motherboards had an M.2 connector, many were speed limited or had a caveats list a mile long. All Z170 motherboard boasted about their "full speed" PCI-E 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, and in our reviews those claims generally held up. With this new Z270 motherboards we expect similar performance levels from the M.2 slots, and that is what we are here to find out. While there still isn’t an M.2 SSD that can make full use of this interface's theoretical maximum bandwidth of 32Gbps (4GB/s), we settled on one that could crack the 2000MB/s barrier: the Samsung SSD 950 PRO 256GB.

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Despite now being usurped by the SSD 960 PRO, this high performance NVMe PCI-E SSD combines Samsung's awesome UBX controller with its industry-leading 3D V-NAND and is capable of sequential read speeds of up to 2,200MB/second and write speeds of up to 900MB/sec.

One of the ways that we will be evaluating the performance of a motherboard's M.2 interface is by verifying that is capable of matching or exceeding these listed transfer rates. The other is by checking to see whether it performs as well as when we install the SSD 950 PRO onto a ASUS Hyper M.2 x4 expansion card plugged directly into a PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot. The PCI-E lanes that the M.2 slot requires can come from either the processor or more usually the Z270 PCH, and we are interested to see how well that lane splitting was implemented and whether it is causing any performance issues.

One of the coolest aspects of the ASRock Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac is the fact that it features three M.2 connectors, which can mean less cable management issues if you decide to ditch conventional wired storage. Although you can RAID the two together, we aren't going to be able to test that out since we don't have another SSD 950 PRO laying around. Nevertheless, we are interested in determining whether there is a performance difference between both connectors.

M.2 slot vs. PCI-E​

As can see, the performance of the single M.2 slot on the Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac was excellent. It performed within a fraction of 1% of the performance of the PCI-E slot adapter. Can't ask for much better than that.

While transfer rates are obviously an important metric, we figured that it was also worthwhile to take a peak at instructions per second (IOPS) to ensure that there wasn't any variance there either:

M.2 slot vs. PCI-E​

Once again, the differences are essentially non-existent and well within the margin of error for this benchmark. As a result, it is clear that the solo M.2 interface on the Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac has been very well implemented and should ensure that you get optimal performance from any current or future M.2 x4 solid state drives.

 

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Auto & Manual Overclocking Results

Auto & Manual Overclocking Results

It wouldn't be an HWC review if we didn't include some overclocking results, so we thoroughly tested this motherboard's capabilities, especially its auto-overclocking functionality. There won't be any ground breaking insights on how to overclock Kaby Lake - since it's just Skylake Plus - but our personal pointers are to increase the Vcore up to around 1.35V if you're cooling can handle it, while increasing the VCCIO up to 1.20V, and the System Agent voltage up to 1.25V if you plan on increasing the cache or memory frequency. If you are trying to achieve the highest possible DDR4 memory speeds, increasing the VCCIO to 1.25V and vSA to 1.35V might be worth trying out. These last two are really only needed if you plan on seriously pushing the Uncore/cache frequency or the memory frequency. On the memory front, we are sticking with (up to) 1.40V in order to alleviate any possible bottlenecks and to stay inline with all our previous DDR4 reviews. By the way, if you have an unlocked K-series processor, there's no reason to go crazy increasing the BCLK if you can achieve similar results by just tweaking the various multipliers instead.

Auto Overclocking​

The Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac motherboard supports three types of automatic overclocking, one software-based and two found within the UEFI. Within the multi-purpose ASRock F-Stream software suite there is the EZ OC feature, which is a semi-intelligent approach to automatic overclocking. It can accessed by selecting the Performance Mode option and then clicking on the Advanced sub-menu. There aren't really any available options, you just need to click on the Start button and the utility starts off the overclocking process at default clocks and slowly increases to the the frequency until a reasonable sweet spot is found.

Within the UEFI BIOS, there are two different modes - EZ Mode and Advanced Mode - both of which offer distinct automatic overclocking features. In the EZ Mode, there is a CPU EZ OC button that once you click and save will automatically apply an overclock preset. In the Advanced Mode, there is the Optimized CPU OC setting, with five available options, ranging from Turbo 4.6GHz to Turbo 5.0GHz. This is another feature that relies on presets, so it can't customize the overclock to best suit your particular system. On the plus side, it is as quick and easy as selecting the desired option and exiting the UEFI.

With all of that said, let's start off with the software-based EZ OC feature:

Click on image to enlarge​

As you can see, using the Turbo 5.0GHz preset in the EZ OC section of the F-Stream app, we were easily able to overclock our processor to 5.0GHz. However, the Vcore was set very high at 1.456V. The memory speed was not touched, nor was the cache frequency, so those voltages were not touched.

Since presets are 'dumb' because they need to take into account even the worst scaling processor, we think it's time to take a look at one of the other automatic overclocking features.

Click on image to enlarge​

The first of two types of automatic overclocking found in the UEFI is the CPU EZ OC button. Since it's found in the EZ Mode part of the UEFI, this feature is super simple; you just click on the icon, save & exit, the system reboots and the overclock is applied. This preset increased the core clock to 4.6GHz, which is fairly minimal increase, and oddly unlike on the Gaming K6 there wasn't a 200Mhz bump in the cache frequency.

Click on image to enlarge​

In the Advanced Mode section of the UEFI, there is the Optimized CPU OC setting with five available options ranging from Turbo 4.6GHz to Turbo 5.0GHz. We tried the most aggressive preset and much to our surprise it worked perfectly. Apparently, 5.0GHz isn’t that hard on Kaby Lake. Regrettably, this preset set a very high Vcore of 1.45V, which isn’t a chip killer but will produce a ton of heat. That much voltage will likely overwhelm most mainstream cooling solutions whenever the processor is placed under any type of load. Nevertheless, with our Corsair Hydro H100i GTX we managed to stress test this overclock, and it was perfectly stable...but a little warm. Once again, unlike on the Gaming K6 there was no increase in the cache frequency, which is a weird omission.

Manual Overclocking

Click on image to enlarge​

Since the Optimized CPU OC feature had established a 5.0GHz overclock at a high 1.45V, we decided to settle on that very respectable frequency and work on lowering the Vcore as much as possible to reduce the heat output. We are now well aware of the capabilities of our chip, so we were quickly able to lower the voltage down to 1.36V. This lowered the overall heat output and allowed us to overvolt and overclock the cache to a solid 4.6GHz. This motherboard was also able to apply our G.Skill Trident Z F4-3866C18D-16GTZ memory kit's XMP profile, which is fantastic.

While DDR4-3866 is a very high memory frequency, given this motherboard's dual-slot design and the fact that is is certified for DDR4-4000+, we just have to find out what the limit is:

Memory Overclocking

G.Skill DDR4-3866 / Corsair DDR4-4000 - Click on images to enlarge​

As you can see, this motherboard fully lived up to its memory overclocking potential. Not only did it support our Corsair DDR4-400 memory kit - in other words it was able to apply its XMP profile - but we were also able to overclock our G.Skill DDR4-3866 kit up to DDR4-4000 as well. Very few motherboards have proven themselves this adept at handling very high memory frequencies.

Overall, we are very impressed with this motherboard automatic and manual overclocking capabilities. Not only was it able to automatically push our Core i7-7700K to an impressive 5.0GHz, but it also proved imminently capable when it came time to manually overclock the CPU and memory.

 

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System Benchmarks

System Benchmarks

In the System and Gaming Benchmarks sections, we reveal the results from a number of benchmarks run with the Core i7-7700K and Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac at default clocks, with the three best automatic overclocks, and using own our manual overclock. This will illustrate how much performance can be achieved with this motherboard in stock and overclocked form. For a thorough comparison of the Core i7-7700K versus a number of different CPUs have a look at our "Intel Kaby Lake i7-7700K & i5-7600K Review" article.

SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP

When running the SuperPI 32MB benchmark, we are calculating Pi to 32 million digits and timing the process. Obviously more CPU power helps in this intense calculation, but the memory sub-system also plays an important role, as does the operating system. We are running one instance of SuperPi Mod v1.9 WP. This is therefore a single-thread workload.

wPRIME 2.10

wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton's method for estimating functions, with f(x)=x2-k, where k is the number we're sqrting, until Sgn(f(x)/f'(x)) does not equal that of the previous iteration, starting with an estimation of k/2. It then uses an iterative calling of the estimation method a set amount of times to increase the accuracy of the results. It then confirms that n(k)2=k to ensure the calculation was correct. It repeats this for all numbers from 1 to the requested maximum. This is a highly multi-threaded workload.

Cinebench R15

Cinebench R15 64-bit
Test1: CPU Image Render
Comparison: Generated Score

The latest benchmark from MAXON, Cinebench R15 makes use of all your system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene using various different algorithms to stress all available processor cores. The test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects containing more than 300,000 total polygons and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights and shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. This particular benchmarking can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. The result is given in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

WinRAR x64

WinRAR x64 5.40
Test: Built-in benchmark, processing 1000MB of data.
Comparison: Time to Finish

One of the most popular file archival and compression utilities, WinRAR's built-in benchmark is a great way of measuring a processor's compression and decompression performance. Since it is a memory bandwidth intensive workload it is also useful in evaluating the efficiency of a system's memory subsystem.

FAHBench

FAHBench 1.2.0
Test: OpenCL on CPU
Comparison: Generated Score

FAHBench is the official Folding@home benchmark that measures the compute performance of CPUs and GPUs. It can test both OpenCL and CUDA code, using either single or double precision, and implicit or explicit modeling. The single precision implicit model most closely relates to current folding performance.

HEVC Decode Benchmark v1.61

HEVC Decode Benchmark (Cobra) v1.61
Test: Frame rates at various resolution, focusing on the top quality 25Mbps bitrate results.
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

The HEVC Decode Benchmark measures a system's HEVC video decoding performance at various bitrates and resolutions. HEVC, also known as H.265, is the successor to the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding) standard and it is very computationally intensive if not hardware accelerated. This decode test is done entirely on the CPU.

LuxMark v3.1

Test: OpenCL CPU Mode benchmark of the LuxBall HDR scene.
Comparison: Generated Score

LuxMark is a OpenCL benchmarking tool that utilizes the LuxRender 3D rendering engine. Since it OpenCL based, this benchmark can be used to test OpenCL rendering performance on both CPUs and GPUs, and it can put a significant load on the system due to its highly parallelized code.

PCMark 8

PCMark 8 is the latest iteration of Futuremark’s system benchmark franchise. It generates an overall score based upon system performance with all components being stressed in one way or another. The result is posted as a generalized score. In this case, we tested with both the standard Conventional benchmark and the Accelerated benchmark, which automatically chooses the optimal device on which to perform OpenCL acceleration.

AIDA64 Memory Benchmark

AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a diagnostic and benchmarking software suite for home users that provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives.

The benchmarks used in this review are the memory bandwidth and latency benchmarks. Memory bandwidth benchmarks (Memory Read, Memory Write, Memory Copy) measure the maximum achievable memory data transfer bandwidth. The code behind these benchmark methods are written in Assembly and they are extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate x86/x64, x87, MMX, MMX+, 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE4.1, AVX, and AVX2 instruction set extension.
The Memory Latency benchmark measures the typical delay when the CPU reads data from system memory. Memory latency time means the penalty measured from the issuing of the read command until the data arrives to the integer registers of the CPU.

 

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Gaming Benchmarks

Gaming Benchmarks

Futuremark 3DMark (2013)

3DMark v1.1.0
Graphic Settings: Fire Strike Preset
Rendered Resolution: 1920x1080
Test: Specific Physics Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score


3DMark is the brand new cross-platform benchmark from the gurus over at Futuremark. Designed to test a full range of hardware from smartphones to high-end PCs, it includes three tests for DirectX 9, DirectX 10 and DirectX 11 hardware, and allows users to compare 3DMark scores with other Windows, Android and iOS devices. Most important to us is the new Fire Strike preset, a DirectX 11 showcase that tests tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. Like every new 3DMark version, this test is extremely GPU-bound, but it does contain a heavy physics test that can show off the potential of modern multi-core processors.

Futuremark 3DMark 11

3DMark 11 v1.0.5
Graphic Settings: Extreme Preset
Resolution: 1920x1080
Test: Specific Physics Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score


3DMark 11 is Futuremark's very latest benchmark, designed to tests all of the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. At the moment, it is lot more GPU-bound than past versions are now, but it does contain a terrific physics test which really taxes modern multi-core processors.

Futuremark 3DMark Vantage

3DMark Vantage v1.1.2
Graphic Settings: Performance Preset
Resolution: 1280x1024

Test: Specific CPU Score and Full Run 3DMarks
Comparison: Generated Score

3DMark Vantage is the follow-up to the highly successful 3DMark06. It uses DirectX 10 exclusively so if you are running Windows XP, you can forget about this benchmark. Along with being a very capable graphics card testing application, it also has very heavily multi-threaded CPU tests, such Physics Simulation and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which makes it a good all-around gaming benchmark.

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark

Valve Particle Simulation Benchmark
Resolution: 1920x1080
Anti-Aliasing: 4X
Anisotropic Filtering: 8X
Graphic Settings: High

Comparison: Particle Performance Metric

Originally intended to demonstrate new processing effects added to Half Life 2: Episode 2 and future projects, the particle benchmark condenses what can be found throughout HL2:EP2 and combines it all into one small but deadly package. This test does not symbolize the performance scale for just Episode Two exclusively, but also for many other games and applications that utilize multi-core processing and particle effects. This benchmark might be a little old, but is still very highly-threaded and thus will keep scaling nicely as processors gain more and more threads. As you will see the benchmark does not score in FPS but rather in its own "Particle Performance Metric", which is useful for direct CPU comparisons.

X3: Terran Conflict

X3: Terran Conflict 1.2.0.0
Resolution: 1920x1080
Texture & Shader Quality: High
Antialiasing 4X
Anisotropic Mode: 8X
Glow Enabled

Game Benchmark
Comparison: FPS (Frames per Second)

X3: Terran Conflict (X3TC) is the culmination of the X-series of space trading and combat simulator computer games from German developer Egosoft. With its vast space worlds, intricately detailed ships, and excellent effects, it remains a great test of modern CPU performance. While the X3 Reality engine is single-threaded, it provides us with an interesting look at performance in an old school game environment.

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward Benchmark

Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward
Resolution: 1920x1080
Texture & Shader Quality: Maximum IQ
DirectX 11
Fullscreen

Game Benchmark
Comparison: Generated Score

Square Enix released this benchmarking tool to rate how your system will perform in Heavensward, the expansion to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. This official benchmark software uses actual maps and playable characters to benchmark gaming performance and assign a score to your PC.

Grand Theft Auto V

DirectX Version: DirectX 11
Resolution: 1920x1080
FXAA: On
MSAA: X4
NVIDIA TXAA: Off
Anisotropic Filtering: X16
All advanced graphics settings off.

In GTA V, we utilize the handy in-game benchmarking tool. We do ten full runs of the benchmark and average the results of pass 3 since they are the least erratic. We do additional runs if some of the results are clearly anomalous. The Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) is ostensibly multi-threaded, but it definitely places the bulk of the CPU load on only one or two threads.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Resolution: 1920x1080
Graphical Quality: Custom
Mesh/Shadow/Texture Filtering/Vegetation Range: Ultra
Lighting/Texture Quality/Ambient Occlusion: High
Depth of Field/Order Independent Transparency/Tesselation: Enabled

With its high resolution textures and several other visual tweaks, Shadow of Mordor’s open world is also one of the most detailed around. This means it puts massive load on graphics cards and should help point towards which GPUs will excel at next generation titles. We do three full runs of the benchmark and average the results.

 

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Voltage Regulation / Power Consumption

Voltage Regulation

Since it is a mini ITX motherboard model, we aren't surprised that this model does not have any onboard voltage measurement points, which is what we usually rely on in order to accurately measure the various system voltages. As a result, in this abbreviated overview, we utilized the AIDA64 System Stability Test to put a very substantial load on the system while also monitoring the stability of the all-important CPU vCore line. This was achieved with a 90 minute stress test, and in order to increase the strain on the motherboard's voltage regulation components we overclocked our Core i7-7700K to 4.8Ghz at 1.35V (in the BIOS). Although voltage droop is part Intel's specifications, we utilized the Load-Line Calibration (LLC) settings in order to see if this motherboard has what it takes to maintain a rock steady vCore line.

As you can see, the Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac has very good power output regulation, but the vCore line was clearly not straight as an arrow. In fact, it rippled pretty consistently throughout the entire test - you are seeing an approximately 15 minute portion of the 90 minute run above - but it only ever wavered between 1.355V and 1.360V. That is mere 0.37% ripple, and it certainly not something that we are concerned about.

Power Consumption

For this section, every energy saving feature was enabled in the BIOS and the Windows power plan was changed from High Performance to Balanced. For our idle test, we let the system idle for 15 minutes and measured the peak wattage through our UPM EM100 power meter. For our CPU load test, we ran Prime 95 In-place large FFTs on all available threads, measuring the peak wattage via the UPM EM100 power meter. For our overall system load test, we ran Prime 95 on all available threads while simultaneously loading the GPU with 3DMark Vantage - Test 6 Perlin Noise.

Unsurprisingly, this motherboard has the best power consumption numbers that we have seen on any Z270 motherboard, and in every category too. Fewer slots and ports means less need for accompanying support circuitry, and that ultimately leads to energy savings. The fact that this motherboard is outfitted with a top-notch CPU VRM definitely helps as well.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

The best aspect of a Mini-ITX motherboard is obviously that it is very small, while the worst is that you usually need to be willing to sacrifice ports, slots, and other features in order to achieve that diminutive size. Thankfully, that is not really the case with the ASRock Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac. While ASRock haven't devised a magical way of adding multiple PCI-E slots to a 7" x 7" square, they have managed to cram in six SATA ports, a full-speed M.2 slot, ample USB connectivity, and a handful of extremely useful but rarely implemented features.

First and foremost, this model supports Thunderbolt 3 via its single USB Type-C port. What this means is that the port can used for not only Thunderbolt 3 40Gb/s connectivity, but USB 3.1 10Gb/s and DisplayPort 1.2 as well. That last feature is particularly interesting since if you're using integrated graphics you can connect a 4K 60Hz display via a USB-C cable. ASRock have also added support for the Power Delivery 2.0 standard, so the USB Type-C port can output up to 36W and also handle up to 6 daisy-chained devices.

The other technological highlight is obviously the inclusion of a HDMI 2.0 output, which is not natively supported by Intel on this platform. An aftermarket controller adds this functionality, and provides those with 4K displays the means to output to them at full resolution and at 60Hz. When you combine this HDMI 2.0 port, with the DisplayPort 1.2 via USB Type-C functionality, and the native DisplayPort 1.2 output, you gain the ability to run three 4K displays, that's 12K at 60Hz from a tiny motherboard. You obviously will not be gaming at 12K - or even 4K frankly - but it would make for a phenomenal productivity workstation or even just eye-popping digital signage.

The onboard wireless connectivity is another extremely welcome feature, since Mini-ITX systems are often not just stationary computer, they are moved around, and not everywhere has a wired connection close by. The Intel Wireless-AC 7265 Wi-Fi module is a known element, which is to say that it is will highly compatible with a wide variety of operating systems and it also exhibits solid performance.

The onboard audio proved to be quite competent as well, placing third out of the six Z270 motherboards that we have reviewed. Based on the new Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec, and featuring a Texas Instruments N5532 headphone amplifier for the front-panel output, this audio solution should satisfy whether it is used for gaming or for home theater purposes. By the way, this model has six analog audio jacks and a digital S/PDIF output, which is really impressive when you consider that most Mini-ITX motherboards have only three outputs total. The addition of the Creative Sound Blaster Cinema 3 software is obviously also a bonus for those who really want to go hands-on with their audio.

Ironically for such a tiny motherboard, the Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac has one of the most over-built VRMs that we have seen on a Z270 motherboard. Because of this - and of course the dual memory slot design - we were quite confident that it would prove to be a solid performer in the overclocking department...and it is! Not only were we able to push our Core i7-7700K to 5GHz with both automatic and manual overclocking, but we were able to hit DDR4-4000 using both our 16GB G.Skill DDR4-3866 and 8GB Corsair DDR4-4000 memory kits. This is a feat that less than a handful of Z170 and Z270 motherboards that we've reviewed have successfully accomplished.

Overall, the ASRock Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac is fantastic motherboard. That would be true even if it wasn't a Mini-ITX model, but the fact that it is makes it even more impressive. If we were building a tiny system this is the motherboard that we would want in it, at least partially because that HDMI 2.0 port is priceless for proper interfacing with a 4K TV. With a retail price of $170 USD, this model is fairly reasonably priced, but that's less so the case in Canada where it can sell for almost $290 CAD.