Connectique et I/O

Supermicro equipped the C7Z170-OCE with six angled SATA ports. All of them offer 6Gbps bandwidth. There are no SATA Express ports on this board and we have to say we don't miss them, since there are virtually no peripherals with this connector. Supermicro provided practical onboard power- and reset-buttons and there is also a debug LED on this board as well as a speaker. Looking for the M.2 x4 Gen3 Slot we find it located above the first PCI Express x16 slot. This means that should you choose to install even today's largest CPU cooler there will be enough space between the heatsink and a gaming graphics card to easily swap the card, while the cooler is in place.

  

There is a total of five fan headers on the C7Z170-OCE 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 Supermicro equipped the C7Z170-OCE with one USB 3.1 Type C port, two USB 3.1 and two USB 2.0 ports, two Intel gigabit ethernet ports, as well as an optical out and an analogue audio panel and a PS/2 port. Furthermore there is also an HDMI, a DisplayPort and a DVI-D connector.