Gigabyte Z270 X-Ultra Gaming
A badass budget-busting bombproof board
WITH THE VAST MAJORITY of boards, as far as average users are concerned, providing little beyond greater connectivity and expandability, forking out the cash for flashier mobos often makes little to no sense. Performance differentials are almost non-existent, and taking a GTX 1080 and a Core i7-7700 from a $70 B250 mobo all the way up to the $300 kings of Z270 will likely provide practically no difference beyond increased connectivity, better looks, and a flashier UEFI BIOS. Unless you’re on the liquid-nitrogen cooling train, with a full-fledged arsenal of Core i7s beside you, you’re unlikely to see much difference, as the PC ecosphere tends to lend itself more to silicon limits within the processors themselves than anything the motherboards can muster.
So, Gigabyte’s Z270 X-Ultra Gaming impressed us from the get-go. On the outside, it certainly looks like a highend choice. A quick glance, and you’ll see brushed black aluminum heatsinks, the now ever-present RGB lighting, a rear I/O shield, and a cornucopia of connectivity, including a single M.2 PCIe x4 slot, a U.2 connector, a bank of four SATA ports (including SATA Express), two separate SATA 6Gb/s ports, and two internal USB 3.0 headers as well. No doubt a premium offering, then? Well, perhaps not—the Z270 X-Ultra Gaming is currently available for a meager $165. That’s $30 less than the ITX board we picked up from MSI this issue, and half the price of MSI’s overclocking pro Z270 X Power Gaming Titanium we reviewed the issue before.
Does it show? Sort of, but not in the places you might expect. Performance across the board was actually pretty impressive. At stock, it easily outpaced every single motherboard we’ve tested to date, scoring a pleasing 21.16fps in X265, and a staggering 995 points consistently in Cinebench R15. Memory latency was also top-notch, coming in at an incredible 54.0ns.
However, it’s not all plain sailing, and it’s only when you start looking at how the board handles voltage, in particular, that you realize just where it’s coming unstuck. By default, the Ultra Gaming auto-fixes CPU Vcore voltage between 1.3 and 1.35V— at most, 0.1V higher than Intel’s prescribed settings, and more than 0.05V higher than most other competitors. Not only does this improve general stability, but it also allows Gigabyte to optimize CPU performance across the board at stock. The downside, however, is that it draws notably more power from the wall under load, with our figures showing 156W maximum, with only the X Power coming close out of the five boards we’ve now tested, at 131W. And, alas, that isn’t the end of the Ultra’s voltage problems. During our overclocking spree, and similar to all the boards previously tested, it still managed to achieve the 5GHz silicon limit, but at a noticeably higher voltage than the others, at 1.33V, with only the Z270i Gaming Pro Carbon coming close, at 1.32V. Undervolting also failed to impress, with the Gigabyte again being the highest, at 1.12V at stock.
Overclocking is only a small part of the package, of course, and although tweaking voltages can reduce overall processor temperatures, it’ll probably be an afterthought for the majority of people. Voltages aside, the plethora of connectivity options, fantastic aesthetics, strong stock performance, and price make the Z270 XUltra Gaming phenomenally good value for money. And similar to the offerings Gigabyte mustered last generation, we can’t see many, if any, mobo manufacturers ousting Gigabyte from the top spot of best bang for buck just yet.