BIOSTAR Z270GTN mITX Motherboard Review

By David Ramsey

Manufacturer: BIOSTAR Microtech International Corp.
Product Name: Z270GTN Racing
UPC: 802700507236
Price As Tested: $165 (eBay)

Full Disclosure: BIOSTAR Microtech International Corp. supplied the product sample used in this article.

Mini-ITX (mITX) motherboards, once niche products for HTPCs and the like, are becoming mainstream as the need for multiple PCI-E slots wanes. Today Benchmark Reviews has BIOSTAR’s new Z270GTN Racing mITX motherboard, and it’s aimed squarely at the enthusiast and gamer market with features like solid state capacitors, onboard RGB LED lighting and control, and m.2 and u.2 storage connectors.

I’ll check this board out wi

Features & Specifications

• Intel Z270 chipset supports Intel Celeron, Pentium, and Core i3/i5/i7 LGA1151 CPUs
• Dual-channel DDR4 memory, up to DDR4-3400 and 32GB
• m.2 slot for optional WiFi card
• m.2 PCI-E/mSATA slot for storage
• 4 SATA3 and 1 u.2 connector
• Intel Gigabit networking with Super LAN surge protection
• Realtek ALC892 8-Channel Blu-ray Audio

Intel Z270, huh? Let’s look at that.

Intel Z270 Chipset

This is the first motherboard Benchmark Reviews has tested with the new Intel Z270 desktop chipset, and while there are very few changes from the previous generation Z170 chipset, they’re worth going over.

If you think this looks a lot like the diagram for the Z170 chipset, you’re right. In fact there are really only two enhancements for the Z270 chipset as compared to the Z170 chipset…but they can be significant depending on your system: first, the number of PCI-E 3.0 lanes has been expanded from 20 to 24, and second, support for the Intel Optane memory system.

(Optane is Intel’s new high-performance and high-durability non-volatile memory system, promising substantial improvements to existing flash memory based SSDs.)

For most users, the extra PCI-E lanes will be the biggest draw, as more accessories like m.2 SSDs increase the demand for these high-speed ports. Prior to the Z170, Intel’s mainstream Z97 chipset sported a mere 8 PCI-E lanes, which, when combined with the 16 lanes on the CPU, made for a system total of 24 lanes.

The Z170 chipset bumped the number of chipset-supplied lanes from 8 to 20, and the Z270 take it to 24, for a total of 40 lanes when combined with the 16 lanes on a Sky Lake or Kaby Lake CPU. This finally brings Intel’s mainstream chipsets to “PCI-E parity” with the much more expensive LGA2011-based X99 chipset.

Let’s take a closer look at this mITX motherboard in the next section.

Closer Look: BIOSTAR Z270GTN Racing

If you’re used to the elaborate accessory packages that come with gaming boards from some other vendors, you’ll be disappointed here, with only four SATA cables, an I/O shield, and a drivers/utilities CD to keep the motherboard and manual company.

Your first clue that this is an enthusiast board? The 8-pin auxiliary CPU power connector. The board layout is typical of most mITX motherboards, which isn’t surprising since there’s really not much space to get creative with. This press photo shows the two programmable LED lighting zones on the motherboard configured to shine bright yellow…without any obvious power source. The yellow line around the audio section of the board at the lower left of this image is not illuminated, but serves to point out the fact that the analog audio signals are isolated from the digital circuitry on the rest of the motherboard.

BIOSTAR’s web site claims “super durable 10K hours solid caps”, but the capacitors on our review board are marked as 5K caps. This means the capacitors are rated for 5,000 hours of operation at 105 degrees Celsius. This equates to many years of normal use but it’s still not what was promised.

This m.2 slot at the rear of the board is dedicated to the optional WiFi card. Our test sample didn’t include this card.

At the rear of the board we have a PS/2 keyboard/mouse connector (another nod to enthusiasts, some of whom prefer the PS/2 keyboard interface for its N-key rollover capability), two USB 2.0 ports, a bracket for WiFi antennas, a DVI-D connector, an HDMI connector (but no DisplayPort), four USB 3.0 ports, an Ethernet port, and a standard audio panel. While the audio panel appears to have gold plated connectors (BIOSTAR doesn’t claim this, though, so they may not be gold-plated), the lack of standard color coding means you’ll likely have to double-check the manual to see where to plug your audio gear in. The lack os a USB-C connector is a little disappointing.

The m.2 slot on the back handles both PCI-E and mSATA drives. What it doesn’t handle is the smallest 2240 m.2 form factor, although there are screw-down points for 2260 and 2280 drives. However, a little painter’s tape will keep things in place long enough for this review!

While the Z270GTN Racing has onboard RGB LEDs, BIOSTAR also includes two standard 5050-style RGB LED controller headers, so you can synchronize external LED fans or light strips.

The motherboard’s battery is inelegantly taped to the back of the rear USB 3.0 ports. Although batteries with soldered-on connectors are readily available, they’re obviously less convenient to replace than the more common socketed batteries.

Let’s take a look at the BIOS and utility software of this board in the next section.

mITX Motherboard BIOS and Utility Software

The BIOSTAR Z270GTN Racing’s BIOS interface is divided into three sections: the left shows CPU and DRAM speeds, along with fan speed and CPU temperature; the right section is a help and reference section, and the middle section shows the specific area of the BIOS you’re working with. This is conceptually similar to MSI’s BIOS arrangement, and I rather like it.

The Advanced section of the BIOS gives users control over the things enthusiasts are interested in…

…but overclockers will want to head to the O.N.E. section, where the overclocking settings are. BIOSTAR uses colored backgrounds to denote status: blue background for selected items; tan backgrounds for items you can’t select or change, and black backgrounds for items you can select and change. Some colors will change as you select other items: for example, the “Ring Max OC Ration” will switch to black once you select a “CPU Ratio Mode” other than “Auto”. The list of clocks and power settings that you can change seem pretty complete, although there’s no auto-overclocking function and some of the function names are non-obvious. For example, what’s “Package C-State Demotion”? I dunno, but I can turn it on and off.

You can of course also set the operation of the integrated RGB LEDs in the BIOS.

BIOSTAR also provides a Windows application called Racing GT. It’s mainly a system information/monitoring application.

You can tweak audio, LED, and fan settings from within Racing GT, but that’s about it– you can’t adjust clocks and voltages. And in some sections the nomenclature in the application doesn’t match the nomenclature in the BIOS. For example, the BIOS doesn’t mention “Eco” or “Breathe” modes for the LEDs.

I’ll try overclocking this board in the next section.

Overclocking the Z270GTN

The BIOSTAR Z270GTN doesn’t come with any auto-overclocking utilities, which is a little disappointing since as companies like ASUS and MSI have demonstrated, these auto-overclockers have gotten good enough to extract most of the performance that the installed processor and cooling system can handle, which is a real win for those daunted by the prospect of manual overclocking.

Still, the O.N.E. section of the Z270GTN BIOS will let you tweak clocks and voltages as you please, so let’s do it old-school. Using the same Sky Lake Core i7-6700K processor and Thermalright SIlver Arrow air cooler we used in our review of the MSI Z170 Gaming 7 motherboard, I initially tried an all-cores multiplier of 46 at the same 1.32V VCORE I used with the MSI motherboard. That crashed in the AIDA64 stress test almost instantly.

After some more tweaking I settled on a voltage of 1.38V:

…which gave me the same stable results at 4.6gHz on all cores:

(For some reason, CPU-Z is not showing the correct core voltage for this motherboard, although AIDA64 did…)

Even going to 1.4V was not enough to eke any more (reliable) speed out of this CPU, so I think 4.6gHz is this processor’s maximum. At an ambient temperature of 19 degrees Celsius, the CPU temperature after 10 minutes of AIDA64 stress testing was only 64 degrees.

In the next section I’ll present my final thoughts and conclusion.

mITX Motherboard Final Thoughts

mITX motherboards started as niche products for HTPCs and the like but have been becoming more popular for building compact gaming systems. ASUS is probably the biggest player in this space but other vendors have been joining the market, and I fully expect it to become even more popular as more people figure out that you don’t need the space and expense of a full-ATX motherboard any more.

That said, you do give up a few things: mITX motherboards have only two DIMM slots rather than four or eight; and the small size of the boards mean that you’ll generally have to do without features like POST code readouts, onboard power and reset switches, and the like. And obviously you shouldn’t expect to run more than one GPU!

The hardware isn’t as elaborate as some of the other gaming-oriented boards, but on the other hand with an MSRP of $134.00, this board is significantly less expensive and will provide pretty much the same level of performance. I do wish, though, that BIOSTAR would include a more robust Windows-level utility program that would enable overclocking from within Windows.

Conclusion

BIOSTAR’s Z270GTN Racing mITX motherboard is a solid product that that concentrates on functionality and bang for the buck as opposed to high end features (although the onboard RGB LEDs and integrated controllers for external LEDs are nice). I was able to overclock my Core i7-6700K CPU to the same level of performance as on a much more expensive ATX motherboard, so you’re giving up little if anything in the performance area.

The performance of the board was excellent, with overclocking results equal to more expensive boards.

Integrated RGB LEDs enhance the appearance of the motherboard and will show well in a windowed case.

The Z270GTN’s construction quality was excellent, with only the confusing use of 5K-rated capacitors rather than the 10K caps promised on the product’s web page as a minus.

Functionality is the one weak point of this package, with limited Windows utility support and some confusing terms in the BIOS.

While some enthusiast boards compete on extra features and accessories, the BIOSTAR Z270GTN competes on value. And at an MSRP of $134.00, this board is an outstanding value for anyone interested in building an mITX gaming system. However, Z270GTN isn’t for sale anywhere in the US, yet. We found it sold for $165 on eBay.

BIOSTAR’s Racing product line might not have the street cred of ASUS’ Republic of Gamers or MSI’s Carbon/Titanium series, but with solid performance at a great price, they’re certainly worth your consideration.

Pros:

+ Excellent performance at a great price

+ Onboard RGB LEDs and 5050 LED ports

+ Optional WiFi module

+ Well-designed BIOS interface

Cons:

– Weak utility software

– No DisplayPort video out

– 5K caps rather than the 10K promised on web site

– No USB-C/3.1

Ratings:

• Performance: 9.75
• Appearance: 9.50
• Construction: 9.00
• Functionality: 8.50
• Value: 8.75

Final Score:9.1 out of 10.

Excellence Achievement: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award.