Gadgetory

what's up guys so since the recent launch of Intel skylake CPUs we have seen a flood of z170 motherboards follow suit so today I'm going to be checking out one of these mid-range options from a team over at gigabyte this is their z170 X gaming 7 which comes densely packed with some exciting features for around 220 USD I think the last time I saw this many features in one place was the dashboard of a cop car while I was in the front seat as you can tell gigabyte has a door to their z170 line of gaming motherboards with a red black and white color scheme accompanied by silver accents on the heatsinks shielding the i/o is an oversized cosmetic cover plate that resembles a slab of futuristic armor leading me to believe that this board might have been a transformer in another lifetime if you're a fellow of simpler tastes like myself you can remove the three small screws in back of the cover plate and voila I guess this board is a transformer although that's got to be the saddest transformer ever when you think about it you're a transforming car that's amazing what do you transform into um a car without a bumper Oh while everything on the board including the matte black PCB feels incredibly sturdy and well built all of the white you see on the motherboard is coated with a reflective gloss which in my opinion makes the board look a bit cheaper than it really is perhaps a matte finish or more metallic pieces could spruce up the aesthetic in future iterations up front and center is our LGA 1151 socket for Intel 6th generation of skylake CPUs though the socket isn't backwards compatible with previous gen chips the heatsink mount has stayed the same so you can still bring over your 1150 1155 or 1156 CPU cooler when switching to the new platform next door are four dimm slots for ddr4 modules that support dual channel mode and XMP 2.0 profiles and with the higher density of ddr4 the gaming seven also supports capacities up to 64 gigs and speeds up to 38 66 megahertz of course at the heart of this board is Intel z170 chipset which now supports 10 native USB 3 ports and 20 PCIe lanes over the eight lanes that were available on z97 this increase has led gigabyte to include not one but two X 4m 2 slots at 32 gigabits per second which is great news with the availability of PCIe m2 SSDs on the rise supported drive lengths include forty to sixty or eighty millimeters if you don't need these super fast read and write speeds however each slot does support the cheaper and more widely available SATA protocol as well on the right side of the board you'll find six SATA six ports which are natively controlled by the z170 chipset two more SATA six ports running through an AZ media controller and three SATA Express connectors 3-way SLI and crossfire configurations are available with the board's PCIe by 16 slots with the top slot running at x16 the middle slot at x8 and the bottom at x4 bear in mind though that the top slot runs at x8 in a 2a setup and the bottom slot shares bandwidth with the nearest m2 slot meaning only one of them can be active at a time Universal to their gaming line of motherboards gigabyte has also reinforced all of their PCIe by 16 slots with metal shielding to provide extra strength when supporting heavy graphics cards since I've personally never had a PCIe connector give out under the weight of a hefty card this alleged support system seems about as useful to me as a jockstrap designed for little leaguers now that being said I don't particularly mind the extra eye candy that this metallic plating brings to the board by the way you also get three PCIe by one slots cool story bro for onboard audio gigabyte has added a creative sound Core 3d quad core chip and next to it is a removable cover plate with a stylish tray slight cutout you can also change the color of the LEDs in the included audio suite although I can't imagine anything other than red or white complementing the rest of the board's aesthetic now before we hit all the little trinkets scattered around the board here's a quick look at your 5 for pin fan headers with pwm support now in the upper right hand corner you get 8 voltage measurement points surface mounted power and reset buttons a clear CMOS button and a debug LED all of which are great features to have whether you're doing a test boot outside of your chassis or just trying to figure out why the hell your system won't post just beneath is an OC button that grants you a quick and easy automatic overclock and next to it is an eco button which essentially kicks your system into Prius mode moving on you get two USB three headers a dual BIOS switch an audio gain control switch that you can configure depending on the impedance of your speakers or headphones and a removable op-amp which you can easily replace with one of your own to create the sound signature of your preference finally on the rear i/o you get a ps2 port 5 USB 3 ports with the yellow ones for USB Dax DisplayPort and HDMI video outs 2 rj45 Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports with a killer 8 2400 controller a USB 3.1 type C and USB 3.1 type a port for 10 gigabits per second transfer speeds 5.1 analog audio jacks and spdif out so like I mentioned earlier there really are a ton of features on this board unfortunately many of those features are actually quite useful to the average enthusiasts and overclocker when you consider the wealth of next-gen functionality you're getting out of this board compared to let's say a similarly priced z97 option the sheer value of the z170 X gaming 7 really starts to sink in now if you were considering gigabytes flagship offering you'd have to shell out more than double the cash for their gaming g1 model and while it does pack in some useful features like BRM water cooling support I personally feel that the gaming 7 yields far more bang for the buck so if you're like many other system builders out there who are looking to switch to skylake without breaking the bank this boards excellent build quality and impressive feature set should keep you gaming happily for years to come but let me know what you guys think of this board in the comments and don't forget to test me I like on this video if you enjoyed it before you go feel free to check the description below for an awesomesauce shirt like this one at the moment I am nearly sold out of all of the CPU cooler shirts but rest assured I will be getting those back in stock in all sizes in about a week or so also go ahead and bookmark my Amazon affiliate link and use it to the next time you buy your portable air conditioner thank you to whoever bought that using my link by the way you basically just paid for my internet this month as always I'm Kyle with awesomesauce Network thank you guys for watching and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and I'll see you all in the next video