Connectique et I/O
ASUS equipped the ROG Strix Z270I Gaming with four straight SATA ports. All of them offer 6Gbps bandwidth. There aren't any SATA Express ports but we find two M.2 slots which have been wired using four PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes each. On of the M.2 slots is hidden underneath the PCH cooler while the other one is on the back side of the motherboard. Since there is not much space available on mini-ITX motherboards to begin with ASUS created a PCH heatsink that doubles as a cooler for the first M.2 drive. Having a look around the board we don't find practical onboard power- and reset-buttons and there is no debug LED on this board as well. What you get is a MemOK button, which has proven useful in the past. ASUS decided to place a PCIe x16 slot right below the PCH. This being a miniITX motherobard removing a high-end graphics card can be tight if you're using a large heatsink.
There is a total of
three fan headers on the ROG Strix Z270I Gaming which is enough, to provide a well
equipped miniITX system with fresh air. The headers have been 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. Furthermore there is a plethora of additional headers you find listed below:
Lighting
- 1 x Aura RGB Strip Headers
Fan headers
- 1 x CPU Fan connector(s) (1 x 4 -pin)
- 1 x Chassis Fan connector(s) (1 x 4 -pin)
Watercooling connectors
- 1 x AIO_PUMP connector (1 x 4 -pin)
- 1 x Thermal sensor connector
Overclocking and debugging connectors
Additional connectors
- 1 x USB 3.1 front panel connector
- 1 x Front panel audio connector(s) (AAFP)
- 1 x System panel(s) (Q-Connector)
- 1 x TPM connector(s)
Looking at the external connectors and buttons directly at the back-panel ASUS equipped the ROG Strix Z270I Gaming with one DisplayPort, one HDMI, one RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet connector, one USB 3.1 Type-A connector, one USB 3.1 Type-C connector, two USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, one optical audio out (S/PDIF), five audio jacks and two threads for WiFi anntennas.