Hardware Asus ROG Strix Z270F Gaming Review

According to Asus' press release, the Strix Z270I Gaming is the new Impact.

 

Having been on RGB LEDs for nearly a decade I can say they do absolutely nothing for me. Having said that this is easily one of the best looking motherboards I have yet seen, so congratulations Asus.

 

It's lovely, isn't it. I can't help feeling that everything has 'gone all big' again though - I'd love to see this level of attention lavished on ITX stuff by manufacturers (oh, and mATX at a push too ).

 

Did you guys bend one of the pins for the I/O front panel connector? Just looking at the last photo.

 

I have one of these and it took my 7600K to 5.1ghz using 1.34v but I have to use AVX clock down -2 to 4.9ghz, it's possible to get 5ghz with AVX (LLC +4).

With AVX at 5ghz even using Arctic Liquid Freezer 360 AIO cooler, core temps rose to 87 degrees using OCCD stress testing - dropping AVX to -2 allowed me to get the higher clock for non-AVX stability.

Latest BIOS has a 5ghz OC button which works but overvolts like a bitch to gain the result (1.44v).

Which brings me to the only issue I have now with this board (even with latest BIOS) is I have speedstep enabled (down clocks when idle or on low loads) but can't enable to adjustable voltage as it pumps (unecessarily) up to 1,44v into the cpu under load, not sure if setting LLC to auto fixes this, but OC with AV?X at 4.9ghz is unstable without it (might try a 4.8ghz avx with no LLC see if that helps but thinkthis is hard coded setting in BIOS).

Side note - on my previous set-up 4.8ghz i5 2500K gives 320s in Terragen4 benchmark, 5.1ghz i5 7600K gives 218s which is a reasonable improvement and as such I feel this was money well spent - I think I would of been disappointed had I upgraded sooner.

I've not gone for an M2 upgrade yet - but think that will be the next thing I go for.

 

Just tried no LLC and SVID enabled - same result 1.44v under load when stable OC is 1.34v and temps comfortable under triple rad Arctic Liquid Freezer 360 AIO cooler.

 

It's not afaik

 

The impact will be rebranded under the STRIX brand instead.

 

There is an ITX. OC3D reviewed it today.

Just don't come back complaining to me that I made you spend your money

 

Back to my overvolting using SVID and speedstep.

Very happy to get some quick support advice from Asus (on their forums)

To use SVID correctly, instead of using Offset voltage, switch to adaptive, set offset to auto, adaptive to 0.265v and leave LLC at auto - in testing the voltages better (1.345 OCCD load) - CPU temps are better (under extreme load OCCD or Prime) but not as good as disabling SVID and using offset voltage.

However, in real world computing (games, encoding etc...) I now have 5.1ghz OC (settled for 4.9ghz AVX for 24/7) and adaptive clocks and volts dependent on CPU loads.