EVGA Z170 FTW

The Z170 FTW is priced at $190, making it the nearly affordable Z170 motherboard in our roundup. It sports a mono-colour design using a black PCB, blackness connectors and black heatsinks, while almost all the text is white. This isn't a very hitting motherboard but it looks proficient nonetheless.

Last year when nosotros reviewed the EVGA Z97 FTW the board was found to offer few features compared to the competition and was merely a clone of the Z87 FTW that came earlier it.

Thankfully the Z170 FTW is a niggling more impressive and finally users can install an M.2 SSD on a mid-range EVGA motherboard.

There are four total length PCIe x16 slots plant on the Z170 FTW, the first is wired for full x16 bandwidth, the 2nd x8, the 3rd x4 and finally the last is wired for just x1 bandwidth. Every bit is the case with nigh Z170 motherboards, four-way multi-GPUs are non supported, while 3-way is limited to x8/x8/x4 and ii-way works in a x8/x8 configuration.

When it comes to storage, EVGA forgoes SATA Express back up which isn't really an issue, though they have only included a single Chiliad.2 slot which is limited to support for 42, 60 and 80mm menu lengths. The Yard.2 slot supports either SATA or native PCIe SSDs, though this means it is shared with the 4th and 5th SATA ports.

Speaking of SATA ports, only the standard half dozen provided past the chipset are offered past the Z170 FTW which limits the maximum usable storage interfaces to only half-dozen.

As with most of the motherboards in our roundup, the Z170 FTW uses the Realtek ALC1150 codec, though unlike most manufacturers EVGA hasn't created a fancy audio package for the marketing squad to go all excited nearly.

Onboard there are a few Nichicon sound capacitors and an amplifier labelled 'AIG BDH' that we couldn't find much almost.

Networking is limited to a single wired solution as the Z170 FTW employs the Intel I219V, the aforementioned single Gigabit chip used by the Supermicro MBD-C7Z170-SQ and the Asus ROG Maximus VIII Hero.

In total in that location are eight USB 3.0 ports and six of them are found conveniently on the I/O panel, while an additional two tin be accessed via an on-board header. Sadly USB 3.one is missing from the board, which is a shame every bit there are more affordable Z170 motherboards available sporting multiple USB iii.1 ports.

Around at the I/O console there are two USB 2.0 ports, half-dozen USB iii.0 ports, a Gigabit LAN port, BIOS reset push button, DisplayPort, HDMI output, five audio jacks and an optical output.

EVGA does offer a small Windows-based utility called 'East-LEET Tuning Utility' and this allows users to monitor system vitals and do some basic overclocking within Windows. Think of E-LEET equally an advanced version of CPU-Z. Unfortunately, the voltage options weren't working in the latest version, and so hopefully this is something EVGA addresses in the near futurity.

Every bit for the lath's UEFI BIOS, it works quite well. It looks good and more importantly is like shooting fish in a barrel to navigate. All the required overclocking related options come under the i heading which has been appropriately labeled "Overclock".

Overall, the EVGA Z170 FTW is an aggressive looking Z170 motherboard that is ultimately lite on features.