Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX Motherboard Review

Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX Motherboard Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX Motherboard

Testing – CPU Testing
First up we have Sisoftware Sandra. We ran the two CPU specific benchmarks the Processor Arithmetic and Processor Multi-Media. Higher scores are better here.

sandra-proc

sandra-mult

CINEBENCH uses a test scenario that makes use of all of your system’s processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene (from the viral “No Keyframes” animation by AixSponza). This scene makes use of various algorithms to stress all available processor cores. Higher scores are better here.

cine

The x264 HD Benchmark 5.0 encodes a 1080p video segment into the x264 format. There are two passes with 4 runs each. We average the 4 runs for each pass to give you what you see below. Obviously higher frames per second is better. You can see the motherboard takes a bit of a hit because of less memory.

x264

10 comments
  1. But how is the Wifi on it? I can see that you tested the LAN but what I’m really looking for is information on how good is the built-in wifi adapter.

  2. I haven’t done any kind of testing of anything specific, but I was able to play Rocket League over the wi-fi in a busy hospital, so it can’t be terrible.

  3. They’re marketing to a clueless audience. You can’t build a good gaming rig in most if not all ITX cases because they don’t have good enough airflow for mid to high end CPU and video cards. Then again a decent video card will be full height so the case at least has to accommodate that unless you get some kind of right angle riser board or cable involved, which means there would be enough space to stuff a 120mm fan on the side, cutting a hole for it if the case didn’t have a mount there already.

    Besides the better than avg. integrated audio, this board makes more sense to me as a NAS or fileserver board, where you use the integrated video which otherwise is more of a waste of I/O panel space than a benefit, and stuff an SATA RAID card into the 16X PCIe slot, then underclock the CPU to reduce cooling and power consumption, EXCEPT the problem with this is that the board is bound to cost at least twice as much as other boards that are almost as capable for that purpose, and a multi-drive 3.5″ HDD capable case tends not to be ITX so the size reduction basically only takes away a few PCIe slots that could be used for any features the board lacked and still come in under the cost of the Z170N.

    In the end I suspect that Gigabyte thinks they can make gamers pay more for less, that they don’t have any common sense or something, lol. However I wouldn’t mind this board for a HTPC if the video could do 4K @ 60Hz, but it can’t even do a lowly 30Hz:

    Quote Gigabyte Product Page: “Integrated Graphics Processor-Intel® HD Graphics support:
    1 x DVI-D port, supporting a maximum resolution of 1920×1200@60 Hz
    1 x HDMI port, supporting a maximum resolution of 4096×2160@24 Hz
    * Support for HDMI 1.4 version.

  4. The USB 3.0 connector on the motherboard is placed in the wrong place. I ruined my connector once I attached my CPU cooler.

  5. Node 304. 1050 Ti 4GB. SF450 PSU. One SSD. One HDD. Skylake i5. 16GB RAM. With this setup, you can literally build a shoebox for a grand and change that will run anything pre-2015 at 1080P with decent framerates. And the cooling will be pretty decent, too, since the CPU and GPU together won’t pull more than 140W combined and the total theoretical maximum power draw will be less than 250W. Hell, I’m planning this exact build for my birthday since my laptop’s measly 840M is long obsolete.

  6. I LOL’d at NAS board. I have this board with i7 6700k OC’d to 4.6GHz, a GTX 1080 installed, in a silverstone RVZ01 case. CPU temp never exceeds 65C at gaming for hours.

    You must be living under a rock or sumthing mate!

  7. WHAT????????????????
    Node 304 with a 1070 here. What the hell are you talking about, dude? With a Noctua U12 I never exceed 62°C in game.
    Admit it, little child: you know jack squat about rig building. FFS, go back to playing on your Xbox One and leave gaming builds to adults: you’re pathetically embarassing…

  8. Do not waste time with him, he probably owns a Vibox prebuilt PC or something of equally abysmal quality.

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