BIOSTAR Z270GTN mITX Motherboard Review

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.