Intel 200 series ITX motherboards (Kaby Lake)

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kuhla

Limp Gawd
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Early list of 200 series ITX motherboards for Kaby Lake (but they support Skylake too).

Edit 4 - Feb 1: Filtered newegg link: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...EMMark=0,N,1&bop=And&Order=PRICED&PageSize=36

EVGA Z270 Stinger

ECS Z270H4-I

MSI Z270I Gaming Pro Carbon AC

MSI H270I GAMING PRO AC

Gigabyte GA-Z270N-WIFI

Gigabyte GA-H270N-WIFI

Asus Strix Z270I Gaming

ASRock Z270M-ITX/ac

ASRock Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac

ASRock H270M-ITX/ac

EDIT: Updated some links to change from news articles to official product pages. Cleaned up formatting.
EDIT 2 - Jan 9: Links added.
EDIT 3 - Jan 23: More added.
 
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I'm so glad they actually look good. If I didn't already have a working mobo, I would be on these 100%. If you alright have a Z170 board, the upgrade isn't worth it, but people looking to come into the market have actual options this time which is great!
 
I was holding off z170 because I wanted m.2, TB3 & dual nics.

However I never realized how badly I wanted something without knowing it when saw the Strix with dual m.2 ports.
 
Great! I am going to have to pay more for my itx boards because all the manufacturers are catering to rgb losers.

I was hoping that some of these itx boards would have multiple m.2 slots. I'm also happy that they are on the front on that strix board. $180 feels really steep though :(
 
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Don't forget about H270. Gigabyte's H270N is a nice upgrade over the H170N (support for 2400 MHz RAM profiles).
 
Nice to see the dual nic boards are getting a clue and making sure both are intel instead of realjunk or killercrap. The kind of people that really use more than 1 port tend to care about the drivers and such.

Curious to see which way asrock decided to manage the lanes of their thunderbolt port.
 
danger said:
Great! I am going to have to pay more for my itx boards because all the manufacturers are catering to rgb losers.

I was hoping that some of these itx boards would have multiple m.2 slots. I'm also happy that they are on the front on that strix board. $180 feels really steep though :(
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The Strix has one m.2 on the front and one on the back. Though not sure yet how well that one on the front will fare because it is sitting right on top of, and sharing a heatsink with the PCH.

Still I am certainly keeping my eye on that, I haven't been able to figure out which if any of the SATA ports get disabled by the m.2 yet.
 
Erasmus354 said:
The Strix has one m.2 on the front and one on the back. Though not sure yet how well that one on the front will fare because it is sitting right on top of, and sharing a heatsink with the PCH.

Still I am certainly keeping my eye on that, I haven't been able to figure out which if any of the SATA ports get disabled by the m.2 yet.
Click to expand...

Probably none get disabled since the Z270 supports 6 SATA ports and the board only has 4 + only 1 of the M.2 supports SATA.
 
Gurok said:
Don't forget about H270. Gigabyte's H270N is a nice upgrade over the H170N (support for 2400 MHz RAM profiles).
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LOL is this legitimately a reason to upgrade these days? +300 MHz RAM speed?
 
Any idea if these Kaby Lake motherboards support skylake CPUs? I know they're the same LGA 1151 but I don't see any information to confirm that.
 
incredadamible said:
Yes, the new 200 series chipsets support both Kabylake and Skylake. The 100 series chipsets also support the Kabylake CPU's...you will just be missing some features available with the new motherboards/chipsets.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3152...one-big-change-makes-up-for-smaller-ones.html
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So far all the existing information is telling me that I can use a Kaby Lake CPU on a Skylake motherboard, but it's not explicitly stated that it's vice-versa. I guess I'll wait for guinea pigs from countries with good return policies.
 
cowsgomoo2 said:
So far all the existing information is telling me that I can use a Kaby Lake CPU on a Skylake motherboard, but it's not explicitly stated that it's vice-versa.....
Click to expand...


It is...look for "Supports 7th and 6th Generation Intel® Core™ i7/i5/i3/Pentium®/Celeron®" in the board specs


Still less gen2 USB 3 than I was expecting/hoping and HDMI 1.4 is still hanging on also. I saw on one of the boards that it looks like you'll have to dump your NVMe drive if you want to avail of Optane? See the Strix has an Asmedia controller capable of thunderbolt3 maybe in the future?

Like for the 100 series - I think I'm being drawn to the Asrock Fatality again


Thanks for the spreadsheet!! :)
 
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w00d said:
Probably none get disabled since the Z270 supports 6 SATA ports and the board only has 4 + only 1 of the M.2 supports SATA.
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That isn't the issue, it is an issue of PCIe lanes from the CPU. SATA ports use PCIe lanes to communicate to the CPU. Usually a PCIe x4 slot (m.2 NVMe) will share the bandwidth with 2 SATA ports. So using that PCIe x4 will disable the shared SATA ports.

"Despite the Z170 chipset having 20 PCIe lanes to use, there is some sharing going on here. The PCIe x4 slot shares its bandwidth with the SATA 0/1 connectors, so the SATA connectors will be disabled if a PCIe x4 device is installed there. Similarly, the U.2 slot shares its bandwidth with the SATA 2/3 connectors and the M.2 slot with the SATA 4/5 connectors. If you want to install a PCIe x4 device, a U.2 drive and a M.2 drive at the same time, the SATA connectors will all be inoperable. A PCIe x2 or slower device will not disable the SATA 0/1 connectors."

From an Anandtech Z170 review as an example: http://www.anandtech.com/show/10935...tra-gaming-z170x-designare-motherboard-review
 
Missing is the ASUS ROG Maximus Impact... I wonder what they have planned... Anyone heard any rumors?
 
TheHobbyist said:
Missing is the ASUS ROG Maximus Impact... I wonder what they have planned... Anyone heard any rumors?
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Total FUD,but I am gonna say "TWO U.2 ports now…!!!"

Actually, if Intel updated the 750 Series (or, if we knew more about Optane…), I could get behind dual U.2 ports…!!!
 
Boil said:
Total FUD,but I am gonna say "TWO U.2 ports now…!!!"

Actually, if Intel updated the 750 Series (or, if we knew more about Optane…), I could get behind dual U.2 ports…!!!
Click to expand...

I have a feeling U.2 is a dead standard, at least as far as the consumer market goes. The only things I see using U.2 in the future are going to be enterprise products. Because mobile is the growth market the focus will be on m.2 devices.
 
Hey everybody!

Don't want to start a battle here about what's better or current or whatever....

Just a simple question...

Will 200 series (with kabylake cpu installed on it) support W7?????
 
Is the new Asmedia controller so good that the Alpine Ridge TB3 controller has been abandoned? Or have these dual M.2 configs taken up all available lanes, despite the 4x increase over Z170?
 
Pantera_666 said:
Hey everybody!

Don't want to start a battle here about what's better or current or whatever....

Just a simple question...

Will 200 series (with kabylake cpu installed on it) support W7?????
Click to expand...

I saw a few people on other forum had done it. Most run just fine, a couple people reported that on board graphic was disabled. Need patch i suppose.
 
While not ITX, but STX. This one is really cool I think.

MXM for graphics, 4 M.2 slots, one for wifi, 3 for SSD.

https://smallformfactor.net/news/asrock-z270m-stx-mxm-pictured

upload_2017-1-7_20-17-38.png

upload_2017-1-7_20-17-50.png
 
Very cool! Tiny STX board and they managed to fit three 2280 M.2 slots while we haven't seen a single ITX board with more than two and most only have one.

This is easily the coolest thing I've seen out of CES this year. It would be awesome if we actually saw some consumer availability for the MXM graphics parts they list like the RX 480 and GTX 1060, but I wouldn't hold my breath for that.
 
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Now we're talking...

But are my eyes deceiving me or are there no SATA ports there at all for mechanical harddrives or SSDs that are not M.2?
 
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There are two sata headers on the back just like the old asrock stx board.
 
TheHobbyist said:
Missing is the ASUS ROG Maximus Impact... I wonder what they have planned... Anyone heard any rumors?
Click to expand...

I think its safe to say they'll make one. Just a matter of time really. May have to wait until spring if its not ready now.
 
I thought 200 series is W10 only with no driver support for any other windows?

Really liking the STX board - looks like it has everything I'm looking for. (Just need to wait for AMD to show up before conmmiting). This is still classiified as STX even though they've increased the 5" x 5" size? Also, are they standardising the front panel connectors on these boards to compliment a standard 'STX' case?​
 
Shintai said:
While not ITX, but STX. This one is really cool I think.

MXM for graphics, 4 M.2 slots, one for wifi, 3 for SSD.

https://smallformfactor.net/news/asrock-z270m-stx-mxm-pictured

View attachment 14214
View attachment 14215
Click to expand...

WOW…!

That is really cool…! I am gonna assume the M.2s support NVMe…?

I can see a great little gaming rig, one M.2 for Boot/OS drive & the other two in a RAID for Super Duper Game Load Times…!

And the MXM could work fine, is there not already 1060 thru 1080 MXM units out there in assorted laptops…?!?

Interesting…!!!
 
From what I understand, the STX form factor spec did not originally specify the layout of the front panel connectors, and there was no I/O shield on the back -- but manufacturers got together and took things into their hands.
I think they "did derp" on placing USB between the microphone and headphone jacks. If you had a headset plugged in and inserted a USB plug, the headset connectors would be in the way.

danger said:
There are two sata headers on the back just like the old asrock stx board.
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Ah, those are low-profile headers and not regular SATA-ports that I had expected. Thanks!
 
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Boil said:
WOW…!

That is really cool…! I am gonna assume the M.2s support NVMe…?

I can see a great little gaming rig, one M.2 for Boot/OS drive & the other two in a RAID for Super Duper Game Load Times…!

And the MXM could work fine, is there not already 1060 thru 1080 MXM units out there in assorted laptops…?!?

Interesting…!!!
Click to expand...

The design reaps of the perfect small gaming platform. :)
 
Erasmus354 said:
Except game load times are no longer storage dependent. https://hardforum.com/threads/nvme-...a-iii-ssd-game-load-time-comparisons.1911914/

Compared Single NVMe, Massive Raid 6 array at PCIe x8, Single 850 Evo, and 42GB RAM drive. Load times were nearly identical on almost all tests between all different storage mediums.
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Don't confuse me with facts…

IT HAS THREE (3) PCIe 3.0 x4 M/2 SLOTS…!!!

Now the wait to see if it is available as a stand-alone product (…meaning, not as a barebones mini PC…), and to see if MXM GPUs become an available thing…

I could see a sleeker chassis for this, one that ditches the ODD/2.5" SDD area for decreased overall volume…
 
Vittra said:
Is the new Asmedia controller so good that the Alpine Ridge TB3 controller has been abandoned? Or have these dual M.2 configs taken up all available lanes, despite the 4x increase over Z170?
Click to expand...


Gigabyte is offering an Alpine ridge add-in card. That's obviously not going to work for ITX.

Anybody know if any of these are using Alpine ridge? That's a big deal for me (and why I went almost exclusivity gigabyte for z170)
 
Zangmonkey said:
Gigabyte is offering an Alpine ridge add-in card. That's obviously not going to work for ITX.

Anybody know if any of these are using Alpine ridge? That's a big deal for me (and why I went almost exclusivity gigabyte for z170)
Click to expand...


The Asrock is Thunderbolt 3 so must be Alpine Ridge.
 
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