Connectors and I/O

ASUS equipped the Z170-A with six angled SATA ports. All of them offer 6Gbps bandwidth. Two SATA ports can be combined to one SATA Express connector and also natively wired to the PCH there is an M.2 x4 Gen 3 slot. You won't find practical onboard power- and reset-buttons and there is also no debug LED on this board. What's standard since quite a few generations is the MemOK buttons, which has proven useful quite a few times. ASUS also decided to place a PCIe x1 slot right below the I/O panel on the back of the board. After that one there is a PCIe x16 Gen 3 slot. This means that it's well possible to remove a graphics card even if a large CPU heatsink has been installed.

There is a total of six fan headers on the Z170-A which is more than enough, to provide a well equipped high-end or workstation with fresh air. The fan header are located close to the CPU as well as spread over the board. Other than that it's a good thing that all of them feature four pins, which allows for rpm regulation in BIOS as well as under Windows.

Looking at the external connectors directly at the back-panel ASUS equipped the Z170-A with two USB 3.1 ports, whereas there is one Type-C connector, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports, one Intel gigabit ethernet port, as well as an optical out and an analogue audio panel and a PS/2 port. Furthermore there is also an HDMI, a DisplayPort, a VGA port and a DVI connector.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 3 - Features	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 4 - Layout	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 19 - Tomb Raider
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 21 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 9 - 3D Mark	Page 22 - Power Consumption
Page 10 - 3D Mark 11	Page 23 - Performance Rating
Page 11 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 24 - Price Comparison
Page 12 - PC Mark 8	Page 25 - Conclusion
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1