Skylake-Based Z170 Gaming Mini ITX Motherboard

... and of course the Asus z170i Pro Gamer just popped up on Newegg. How did I know that would happen?
I managed to get the original order cancelled and placed a new order with the Asus board instead.
Just a little more patience...
 
... I would have ranked the Asrock closer to the Impact than the Pro Gamer
 
iFreilicht said:
M2 and U2 are vastly different connectors. U.2 is a replacement for SATA of sorts that will allow 2.5" SSDs to get much higher performance, while M.2 is a replacement for mPCIe and mSATA and is designed for components mounted on the board directly.

That means the Maximus VIII Impact doesn't have any support for board-mounted drives at all. None. There's currently no way of mounting the drive you want to use on this board, you'd have to use an off-board adapter.
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Hot damn, I thought they were the same physical connector and just different spec/speed (similar to SATA 1,2,3).

So that rules out that board!
 
Mackan said:
No explanation there why Asus chose U.2 instead of M.2, other than "M.2 dumps heat onto the motherboard PCB". :rolleyes:
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I'm fairly sure Asus wasn't worried about a 5-7W component considering this is an extreme OC board.

It's obvious their board is filled to the brim, considering the socket, keep-out area and PCIe traces needed, along with a possible switch for the U.2 port. It seems Asus didn't want to cut the PCIe x16 port again to x8, probably due to the marketing department claiming customers don't know it doesn't matter. And they probably figured U.2 is the more future-proof port for max speed since M.2 will most likely be thermally or power limited.

Is it justified ? Maybe, they were the first to release a consumer mITX board with M.2 with PCIe 3.0 x4 and NVMe support if I'm correct. Now with the Samsung 950 Pro a year later, it's the fastest consumer SSD you can install. Next year it might be a U.2 drive that will fit this new board.
 
If I knew for sure Samsung were going to bring out a U2 drive then it would be future proofing, but the safest bet is always to buy things based on what they do now and what you need now.
 
Phuncz said:
I'm fairly sure Asus wasn't worried about a 5-7W component considering this is an extreme OC board.

It's obvious their board is filled to the brim, considering the socket, keep-out area and PCIe traces needed, along with a possible switch for the U.2 port. It seems Asus didn't want to cut the PCIe x16 port again to x8, probably due to the marketing department claiming customers don't know it doesn't matter. And they probably figured U.2 is the more future-proof port for max speed since M.2 will most likely be thermally or power limited.

Is it justified ? Maybe, they were the first to release a consumer mITX board with M.2 with PCIe 3.0 x4 and NVMe support if I'm correct. Now with the Samsung 950 Pro a year later, it's the fastest consumer SSD you can install. Next year it might be a U.2 drive that will fit this new board.
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Design decisions aside, I find it funny when JJ mentions good cable management on this board when talking about the 24 & 8 pin, but says nothing about the U.2 cable which will stick out as a sore thumb.
 
True, mITX doesn't have much real estate on the edges. Two edges are completely out of the question (PCIe and I/O side), one is full of power circuitry in the case of the Impact boards, which leaves one side to put everything. Not an easy task for an engineer. The USB 3.0 header usually draws the short straw and ends up somewhere in the middle of the board.
 
Mackan said:
Asus JJ talks about the Impact VIII board here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKqybmuZK4I
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He kept doing the chef's handsign.
italian-chef-720.jpg
 
jb1 said:
Yeah hopefully! I wonder why they haven't done this for the mITX board yet given that the Thunderbolt 3 chip is on board?
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The mITX GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 uses a 64 Mbit BIOS chip whereas all the other uATX, ATX etc use a 128 Mbit flash chip so whatever firmware they are talking about I am assuming will be part of a BIOS upgrade. I will be dissecting various BIOS images tonight to find out what Gigabyte have added to these boards BIOS images and if that module can be extracted and added (if there is anough room) to the GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 BIOS image. I won't be able to test if it works though because there are no Thunderbolt 3 Type C to TB1 adapters yet and I only have a Drobo mini with Thunderbolt 1
 
jwsg said:
... I would have ranked the Asrock closer to the Impact than the Pro Gamer
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I was pretty much ok with the Asrock if the Asus Pro Gamer wasn't available, but I had a few conciderations that the Asus board would address with some things I would like to do with this build, one of them being Asus' Wifi Go.
I haven't seen anything online yet that indicates any performance difference between the AsRock and the Asus. Having 3 fan headers (minimum) was an absolute requirement, and both Asus boards and the Asrock meet that. As far as I have been able to see, the only thing I have sacrificed is the USB C connector, and that isn't important to me at this point in time. Maybe in another year or so :D
 
Cheeptech said:
I was pretty much ok with the Asrock if the Asus Pro Gamer wasn't available, but I had a few conciderations that the Asus board would address with some things I would like to do with this build, one of them being Asus' Wifi Go.
I haven't seen anything online yet that indicates any performance difference between the AsRock and the Asus. Having 3 fan headers (minimum) was an absolute requirement, and both Asus boards and the Asrock meet that. As far as I have been able to see, the only thing I have sacrificed is the USB C connector, and that isn't important to me at this point in time. Maybe in another year or so :D
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Asus' Wifi Go is probably the same Broadcom AC module as Asrock Gaming's.
Edit: Seems like Asus is using Qualcomm instead.

By the way, does the Asus Pro Gaming come with USB 3.1 gen2? Deciding between this Asus or MSI, which seems pretty similar spec wise and is a bit cheaper.
 
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hask said:
By the way, does the Asus Pro Gaming come with USB 3.1 gen2? Deciding between this Asus or MSI, which seems pretty similar spec wise and is a bit cheaper.
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Yes the red ports are gen2. Be careful with the msi if you plan to use m.2 drives, it doesn't support 2280 lengths.
 
I guess just like the previous Phoenix board, it's nothing but the orange accents and orange LED lighting.
Something that I didn't notice previously is that they increased the CPU connector from 4- to 8-pin as compared to the 1150 boards.
 
iFreilicht said:
Because the boards are all different, they probably want to do it on the high-tier boards first, as those boards are sold to the customers with the most money.

The more interesting question perhaps would by why they didn't put it on their boards initially? Maybe there was some software problem they couldn't fix, maybe intel wasn't able to certify their boards in time?

I'm fairly certain that this will be rolled out to the mITX board as well, it has the same controller chip after all.
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According to this all the other Gigabyte motherboards will be able to support thunderbolt 3, except for the itx one.

http://www.techpowerup.com/217023/gigabyte-offers-thunderbolt-3-support-on-select-boards-with-a-firmware-update.html
 
sgtspiff said:
What I don't get is what's the difference between that and the H170N wi-fi from gigabyte?.
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The B150 chipset has only 8 PCIe lanes available vs.16 for the H170 and 20 for the Z170. The B150 also lacks RST support, so no RAID.
Depending on which lanes are routed where, there's a chance (small, but until more documentation is available we won't know) that the m.2 slot on the rear is not a 4x slot.
 
Grrr... I just want a Thunderbolt 3 mitx board with m.2 2280 support, how hard can it be?
 
It's out, from Gigabyte
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Which one? It looks like the GA-Z170X-Gaming G1, GT and 7 now have thunderbolt 3 but all are much bigger than ITX. The GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 seems like it MIGHT have Alpine Ridge but no support for Thunderbolt 3 that I can see.
 
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q-silver said:
Which one? It looks like the GA-Z170X-Gaming G1, GT and 7 now have thunderbolt 3 but all are much bigger than ITX. The GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 seems like it MIGHT have Alpine Ridge but no support for Thunderbolt 3 that I can see.
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TB 3 support for that board is probably coming... they've just enabled it on some of their other boards and the Gaming 5 does have an Alpine Ridge controller on it. Seems silly not to enable it.
 
In the press release it says " has expanded with the certification by Intel of the GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-Gaming G1". So perhaps Gigabyte need to get the Gaming 5 through the certification process before saying anything.
 
q-silver said:
In the press release it says " has expanded with the certification by Intel of the GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-Gaming G1". So perhaps Gigabyte need to get the Gaming 5 through the certification process before saying anything.
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Possibly! But they bought these chips from Intel... they could have saved on the board if they weren't planning on going through certification! I think there's a good chance TB 3 will be on this board.
 
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@jb1 : I completely agree.

Having dome similar certifications myself my guess is that they do not want to make promises that they cannot deliver on. Intel may also restrict them from even using the term Thunderbolt until after they have completed the certification. I just wish they would get on with it and/or provide us with an update.

The Gaming 5 would be the perfect ITX board if it had Thunderbolt! no... let's be more optimistic than that... The Gaming 5 will be the perfect ITX board once it has Thunderbolt! ;)
 
Wishful thinking. Gigabyte GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 looks like a nice board, but Gigabyte has said in the past that this board will not support TB3.
 
DrRetina said:
Wishful thinking. Gigabyte GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 looks like a nice board, but Gigabyte has said in the past that this board will not support TB3.
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Was that an official statement? I thought this was just the answer to a support request?
 
No asrock thread so just a mention that's there's a new 1.30 Z170 ITX BIOS out
 
hello again,

I got the gigabyte 170n wifi and a i5-6600k.
I thought that overcloking on skylake would be much better than previous models.
Alot of revieuwing sites say that it gets 4.5GHz easely.

Maybe im doing something wrong but i get blue screens when going higher than 4.4GHz..
overvolting dousent help either.:(

do i have bad luck and got a i5 that just dousent go higher than 4.4GHz, or can the motherboard play a factor in this?
 
I upgraded from the ASUS M7I to the Asrock X99 ITX because I wanted M.2 and the full PCIE3.0 x16 for the GPU.
I've had a look at a few Z170 mITX motherboard specs and none mention downgrading the PCIE slot when an M.2 is installed (the Asrock Fatality disables some SATA ports). I guess this is due to the additional PCIE3.0 lanes available on the new chipset, a post earlier in this thread seems to support this.

Has anyone found evidence to the contrary?
 
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