Layout

With the Z170 Deluxe ASUS decided to use the same color scheme, which is already in place with their X99 offerings. You find a black PCB as well as coolers with white elements and a white cover for the back I/O panel, which reaches over to the Crystal Sound 3 solution as well. As you might have expected, the layout has been well thought and there is for example enough clearance around the CPU socket to install even todays largest CPU coolers. If you want to install extra long graphics cards, there will be no issues, thanks to the angled SATA ports.

The ASUS Z170 Deluxe comes with a digital 20+2 phase power design. The CPU gets 20 phases and the memory gets a stable current supply from two individual phases. Furthermore ASUS equips this board with high quality chokes, which can cope with high current per phase. A closer look at the capacitors reveals there are 10K Black Metallic Caps, which have an average life span of 10'000 hours.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the Z170 Deluxe. Officially supported are DDR4 3466 (O.C) / 3400 (O.C.) / 3333 (O.C.) / 3300 (O.C.) / 3200 (O.C.) / 3000 (O.C.) / 2800 (O.C.) / 2666 (O.C.) / 2400 (O.C.) / 2133. There is engough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you wont encounter compatibility problems with big coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders. Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 2.0.

On the Z170 Deluxe the southbridge is being cooled by a passiv cooling block. A closer look at the area where the VRM is, shows that there are two more heatsinks, which have been connected to eachother by a heatpipe. Since this is a high-end motherboard build quality is on an exceptionally good level. Apart from that all the cooling blocks are very heavy and that extra weight leaves a good impression.

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