Skylake is officially here! Since Skylake brings with it a brand new architecture and chipset that means we have a bunch of motherboards launching today! The biggest improvement on Z170 chipset is that you get 40% more high-speed I/O lanes (PCI-Express / USB 3.0) compared to Intel’s 9 Series chipsets. If you want the low-down on Intel’s Core i7-6700K processor be sure to check out our review, which went up earlier today. Our first Z170 motherboard review will be ASUS’s Z170-A, which is designed to bring you all of the features of the Z170 chipset, but at a very low cost. This motherboard has great hardware features like USB 3.1, SATA Express and M.2, but also great tuning options like auto-tuning, fan-tuning, and even the ability to use your mobile device as your keyboard and mouse. Let’s take a look and see what ASUS has in store for us with the Z170 chipset!
Special thanks to ASUS for providing us with the Z170-A motherboard to review.
Packaging
The ASUS Z170-A comes in nice retail package. On the front there is a photo of the motherboard and ASUS highlights their 5-way optimization and USB 3.1 support. This packaging is what you are going to see for ASUS’s Z170 mainstream line of motherboards.
Flipping the box over to the back we have a full overview of the motherboard and it goes into detail on many of the different features of the board itself.
Taking everything out of the box we have a very modest accessories package. Included we have 4 SATA cables, a very plain jane I/O shield, SLI connector, Q-connector for your front panel connections, CPU installation tool, user’s guide, and a software and driver CD.
For a full unboxing and overview of the Z170-A motherboard be sure to check out our video below.
