At first we would like to thank Supermicro for offering us a sample of the C7Z270-CG Z270 LGA1151 Motherboard for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About Supermicro:

 

“We are a global leader in high performance, high efficiency server technology and innovation. We develop and provide end-to-end green computing solutions to the data center, cloud computing, enterprise IT, big data, high performance computing, or HPC, and embedded markets. Our solutions range from complete server, storage, blade and workstations to full racks, networking devices, server management software and technology support and services. We offer our customers a high degree of flexibility and customization by providing what we believe to be the industry's broadest array of server configurations from which they can choose the optimal solution which fits their computing needs. Our server systems, subsystems and accessories are architecturally designed to provide high levels of reliability, quality and scalability, thereby enabling our customers benefits in the areas of compute performance, density, thermal management and power efficiency to lower their overall total cost of ownership.

 

We perform the majority of our research and development efforts in-house, which increases the communication and collaboration between design teams, streamlines the development process and reduces time-to-market. We have developed a set of design principles which allow us to aggregate individual industry standard components and materials to develop proprietary products, such as serverboards, chassis, power supplies, networking and storage devices. This building block approach allows us to provide a broad range of SKUs, and enables us to build and deliver application-optimized solutions based upon customers' requirements. As of June 30, 2015, we offered over 4,550 SKUs, including SKUs for server and storage systems, serverboards, chassis, power supplies and other system accessories.

 

We conduct our operations principally from our headquarters in California and subsidiaries in Taiwan and the Netherlands. We sell our server systems and server subsystems and accessories through a combination of distributors, including value added resellers and system integrators, and to a lesser extent to OEMs as well as through our direct sales force. During fiscal year 2015, our products were purchased by over 900 customers in 100 countries. We commenced operations in 1993 and have been profitable every year since inception.”

 

 

Product Features:

 

1. Single socket H4 (LGA 1151) supports Intel® 7th/6th Gen. Core™ i7/i5/i3 series

2. Intel® Z270 Express Chipset

3. Up to 64GB Non-ECC UDIMM, DDR4-3733MHz (OC), in 4 DIMM slots

4. 1 GbE LAN port via Intel® i219V

5. 6 SATA3 (6Gbps); RAID 0, 1, 5, 10

6. 3 PCI-E 3.0 x16 (run at 16/NA/NA, 8/8/NA, 8/4/4, Auto Switch), 3 PCI-E 3.0 x1

7. 2 PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2

8. 2 PCIe 3.0 x4 U.2 (1 share with M.2)

9. 2 USB 3.0 (2 via header)

8 USB 2.0 (2 rear, 6 via headers)

4 USB 3.1 (3 Typa A, 1 Type C)

10. 1 DP (Display Port), 1 HDMI, 1 DVI-D

11. HD Audio 7.1 channel connector by Realtek ALC1150, support SPDIF-Out

 

Product Specifications:

 

 

SuperMicro has been hard at work developing consumer motherboards integrating the brand-new Z270 chipset from Intel and having support for both Skylake and Kaby Lake processors. In this article we will concentrate our view upon the C7Z270-CG motherboard, which seems to borrow some of the packaging elements we have also found along with the C7Z170-OCE model. The product ships inside a custom designed cardboard enclosure, which imitates brushed aluminum on the top layer:

 

 

 

On the bottom area, the manufacturer has placed a photo of the product and explains its main interfaces:

 

 

 

Let’s remove the top layer and see what we’ve got:

 

 

 

The bottom area of the box also contains a product description, but also the technical specifications:

 

 

 

After lifting the top cover, we will get to see the motherboard, which is wrapped inside an anti-static bag:

 

 

 

The bottom layer contains the documentation, along with the rest of the bundle:

 

 

 

The manual is well detailed with both photos and drawings:

 

 

 

Besides the installation disk and the I/O shield, we will get five additional black re-sealable pouches:

 

 

 

In four of the black pouches, we will find a SATA cable, in red color, so not a color match with the motherboard scheme:

 

 

 

The last pouch does have a SLI bridge:

 

 

 

The supplied I/O shield does have a black layer in front, with explanations of each available interface:

 

 

 

A soft cushion is provided in the back of the shield, like we have also seen with high-end motherboards:

 

 

 

C7Z270-CG follows the design lines we have seen along with the C7Z170-OCE, along with the nice green/black accents. The PCH cooler does incorporate LED lighting and extra lights can be also seen in the Audio CODEC area:

 

 

 

Let us take a closer look! In the top left corner we do have one of the two CPU fan headers available, along with the 8-pin CPU power connector:

 

 

 

Under the I/O shielding, we will be able to spot a Parade PS176 DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0a video interface converter:

 

 

 

Further down, under the I/O area we will be able to spot a System fan header:

 

 

 

The fan interface is accompanied by a JSPDIF_OUT header, along with a JPAC1 jumper for disabling the audio section completely. This specific motherboard does have installed a Realtek 1150 CODEC, which we have seen on recently on most tested motherboards:

 

 

 

 

The C7Z270-CG motherboard does come with three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 connectors (the one being x16 electrical, second one x8 electrical and the third one x4 electrical), but also three x1 PCI-Express 3.0 slots:

 

 

 

For additional storage, we have two PCI-E M.2 connectors available:

 

 

 

 

Near the CR2023 CMOS battery, we do have a speaker/buzzer jumper along with the actual buzzer:

 

 

 

On the lower PCB area, we do have (from left to right):

 

-a frontal audio header

-a standby power header

-JI2C1/JI2C2 SMB to PCI Slots header

-a BIOS Recovery switch

-three USB 2.0 headers

 

 

 

Moving on, we do have:

 

-an USB 3.0 front panel header

-a chassis intrusion header

-a TPM header

-the usual Front Panel control header

-a separate Power LED indicator header

-a Watch-Dog function enable header

-a COM port header

 

 

 

Near the Status Code LED display, we are also seeing a Nuvoton NCT6792D SuperIO chip:

 

 

 

One element of novelty on this board are the U.2 ports, which connect directly to the PCI-E lanes on the motherboard, rather than going through the SATA interface, for gaining fast speeds:

 

 

 

Six regular SATA ports are also available, and nearby we can spot a SATA DOM power connector, along with another System fan connector:

 

 

 

 

The 24-pin ATX power connector comes in the same nice green color:

 

 

 

Along with the on-board Power and Reset buttons, we can locate an undocumented JVR1 header, but also another System fan connector:

 

 

 

As the C7Z170-OCE, the C7Z270-CG memory digital PWM comes from Infineon, represented by a Primarion PX3143HDM:

 

 

 

Near the Reset button, we do also have a smaller, Clear CMOS button:

 

 

 

The secondary CPU fan header is located between the CPU VRM and the memory slots:

 

 

 

The memory slots are color-coded and SuperMicro recommends filling the green slots if we do only use two modules. The first two slots (near the CPU socket) are closer together for an unknown reason and this may cause issues when using kits with larger heatsinks such as the AVEXIR RAIDEN:

 

 

 

The VRM is cooled by two separate aluminum themed heatsinks, which are linked by a single heatpipe:

 

 

 

 

The PCH aluminum passive cooler is covered by a themed, plastic shroud, which we will be able to see the LED light shine through:

 

 

 

On the backside of the board, we can observe the row of green LEDs in the audio CODEC area:

 

 

 

On the I/O, we’ve got:

-one PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port

-two USB 2.0 ports

-a DisplayPort port

-a HDMI port

-one DVI port

-a Gigabit LAN port

-two USB 3.1 ports

-a separate USB 3.1 port

-an USB 3.1 Type C port

-the usual audio ports (with optical S/PDIF out)

 

 

 

This is how the system did look like before powering on:

 

 

 

The LED light show starts right up and is a delight to check out if you have a case with a Plexiglas window:

 

 

 

 

 

SuperMicro has fully revamped the GUI versus the previous revision, but it still presents a few flaws. You can see right in the first screenshot that the current time does not fit in the designed interface space, while the top area where we see monitoring stats is very large and minimizes the remaining screen space for other useful information. The left side contains the main menu areas, the right area holds the Help for different options, while on the bottom we do have some extra monitoring stats.

The CPU menu allows us to visualize the currently installed CPU details and some sub-menus can be also spotted here:

 

-CPU Configuration

-Power & Performance

-CPU Overclocking

 

 

 

The CPU Configuration menu gives us some extra details on the processor, but also allows working with its features:

 

The Power & Performance area also holds two sub-menus:

 

-CPU – Power Management Control

-GT – Power Management Control

 

 

CPU Power Management Control is the area to go to if we look on working with the C-States and other miscellaneous options:

 

 

GT Power Management Control does only have two available options we can work with:

 

 

CPU Overclocking menu is the area where people will spend most of the time! Here we can adjust the BCLK frequency, the multiplier for each core, the power limits, voltage settings and more:

 

 

 

The Memory main menu allows us to work with different memory settings:

 

 

A custom Memory Thermal Configuration menu is also available here:

 

18

 

If we would like to load the XMP profile from our modules, we have to navigate to the Memory Overclocking sub-menu. This area also allows the user to work with all possible sub-timings:

 

 

The Advanced area comes with the following sub-sections:

 

-Boot Feature -> which allows working with some boot-specific options

-NCT6792D SuperIO Configuration

-SA Configuration

-Graphics Configuration

-PCH-IO Configuration

-SATA and RST Configuration

-PCH-FW Configuration

-USB Configuration

-PCIe/PCI/PnP Configuration

-Security

-Secure Boot

 

 

The SuperIO Configuration menu allows us to work with the Serial Port settings:

 

 

SA Configuration menu comes with some miscellaneous options for configuration:

 

 

The Graphics Configuration menu allows selecting which GPU would be first initialized and also here we will be able to work with the integrated graphics settings, including overlocking:

 

 

Next we’ve got the PCH-IO Configuration menu, which allows enabling or disabling some of the motherboard interfaces:

 

 

The SATA and RST Configuration menu allows working with the connected storage devices:

 

 

The PCH-FW Configuration menu does display the current ME Firmware version and permits updates when needed:

 

 

USB Configuration options are next:

 

 

Different Security options are available in the dedicated menu:

 

 

The last sub-section is related to Secure Boot:

 

 

Thermal menu does display the live system temperatures, voltages, but also allows fan control:

 

 

The Save&Exit menu also comes with the boot priority section and from here we can choose to save, discard or load factory defaults for the motherboard. A separate save slot is available for us to record to and restore when needed:

 

 

The BIOS update process can be initialized by using the last menu:

 

 

 

Test Setup

 

CPU: Intel i5 6600K Retail & Intel i5 7600K Retail

CPU Cooler: Antec Kühler H2O 620

Motherboard: Currently tested motherboard

RAM: Patriot Viper 4x4GB DDR4 2400MHz @ 2133MHz

Video: KFA2 GTX 1060 OC 6GB (thanks to GALAX/KFA2!)

Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W

SSD: OCZ Vector 150

Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840 Computer Case

 

A new generation also implies refreshed benchmarks and with the same occasion we have also switched to Windows 10, added more RAM and replaced the HIS 380X with the brand-new KFA2 GTX 1060 OC 6GB video card. Our aim with testing on this review was not only to try out a 7600K i5 Kaby Lake processor on the C7Z270-CG motherboard from SuperMicro, but we have also added the Gigabyte Z170X SOC FORCE into the mix. In more detail, we have these testing scenarios:

 

1) i5 6600K was installed on the Gigabyte Z170X SOC FORCE along with the same hardware and we performed the whole suite of benchmarks. In this process, we have used the latest F20c unofficial Beta BIOS (for Kaby Lake support) which seems to have a small bug: with everything at stock, the CPU is overclocked at 4.4GHz so we had to adjust the multiplier manually at 3.9GHz. This action also did also imply the fact that the CPU was always running at the maximum rated Turbo frequency instead of varying between 3.5GHz and 3.9GHz; because of this, you will see slightly higher test scores than the SuperMicro in this test case, the C7Z270-CG functioning correctly at stock frequencies.

2) i5 6600K was installed on the SuperMicro board and we have ran the whole testing suite

3) The i5 6600K processor was again installed onto the Z170X SOC Force board from Gigabyte and we have used the same safe overclocking frequency on our sample, 4.6GHz; going further would mean adding much more voltage and the CPU would go into throttling. After establishing the lowest voltage at this frequency via Prime95 testing, we have went ahead with the test suite.

4) The i5 6600K was then installed on the SuperMicro board and got the exact same treatment. While the Gigabyte was able to run at this frequency with the i5 6600K at 1.308V (as reported by CPU-Z), the SuperMicro board achieved the same at 1.328V, mostly because of the higher VDroop this board comes with.

 

 

(Click to enlarge)

 

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5) After we have received the purchased i5 7600K from the local store, we did install it in the Gigabyte board and ran the same tests at stock. The bug that implied running at 4.4GHz still did manifest here so we had to set the speed manually at 4.2GHz that is the maximum Turbo frequency for this model.

6) The Kaby Lake processor was then installed on the SuperMicro C7Z270-CG and ran the same stock tests.

7) In order to also have clock-to-clock comparison results, we have first attempted overclocking on the Gigabyte board at the same 4.6GHz frequency. We have succeeded this Prime95 stable at 1.224V (CPU-Z report), which is a much lower voltage compared to our Sky Lake retail i5 6600K. The tests were ran again.

8) It was the SuperMicro turn again to run the 7600K CPU at 4.6GHz. In this case we had stability at 1.272V, again because at the higher VDroop.

 

 

(Click to enlarge)

 

(Click to enlarge)

 

9) One of the last testing stages was running the 7600K at the highest frequency possible, while maintaining safe voltages and temperatures, on both boards. First, we have tried this on the Gigabyte Z170X SOC FORCE and succeeded Prime95 stability at 1.344V.

10) The same process was tried with the SuperMicro board; the VDroop had a smaller impact than before so the processor has been Prime95 stable at just 1.352V:

 

 

(Click to enlarge)

 

(Click to enlarge)

 

AIDA64 still does not have this board in its database:

 

 

 

We have extracted more details on the system thanks to the same utility:

 

 

 

 

High speed memory is also no problem for this board since we have tested the G.SKILL TridentZ 32GB 3200MHz DDR4 (F4-3200C15D-32GTZ) kit with it:

 

 

 

AIDA64

Memory

CPU Queen

CPU PhotoWorxx

CPU Zlib

CPU AES

CPU Hash

FPU VP8

FPU Julia

FPU Mandel

FPU SinJulia

FP32 Ray-Trace

FP64 Ray-Trace

CineBench R11.5

CineBench R15

Blender Ryzen Render

PCMark Vantage

PCMark 7

PCMark 8

 

SuperPI XS 32M

X265 Benchmark (HWBOT)

1080P 64-bit Normal

3DMark Vantage

3DMark 11

3DMark 2013

Unigine Valley

Ultra AA Off DX11 1920X1080

Ashes of the Singularity DX12

CPU Focused

 

Despite the fact that the C7Z270-CG board does use the same old Realtek ALC1150 CODEC, we have recorded impressive results with RightMark Audio Analyzer:

 

GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-SOC FORCE 16/44

SuperMicro C7Z270-CG Z270 16/44

 

 

GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-SOC FORCE 24/96

SuperMicro C7Z270-CG Z270 24/96

SuperMicro has made improvements over their first generation of overclocking consumer boards incorporating the Z170 chipset; the C7Z270-CG board does sport a cleaner design but maintains the same nice black/green color scheme. This board was also thought for people that have a transparent side panel so they have added extra LED lighting near the audio interface on the PCB, but also on the PCH cooler.

 

While there is no fancy software available like we have seen with the Gigabyte boards for controlling the system in Windows, we do have at our disposal an UEFI interface with a new design. The sample boards did ship with a BIOS dated 29.09.2016 which is a bit old and needs some improvements regarding the placement of the GUI elements, so they would be more pleasing to the eye. The mouse cursor does not move smooth at all and there is no option to fine-tune that with the current version. Besides the GUI, we would really suggest removing quite a bit of settings available now which regular users would never touch and include Loadline Calibration levels easy to adjust as other manufacturers have for quite some time now. By including configurable LLC levels, we also think that we will be able to minimize the VDroop quite a bit and run the overclocked CPUs at even smaller voltages.

 

Even in its current state, we were able to overclock our 7600K and 6600K retail CPUs quite a bit so for a regular, non-hardcore user that uses water AIO cooling, this board should suffice.

 

The SuperMicro C7Z270-CG board can be found online for about 240 Euros.

 

SuperMicro C7Z270-CG Z270 LGA1151 Motherboard is Recommended for:

 

 

 

We would like to thank again to Supermicro for making this review possible!