The Board - Layout

The Biostar Racing Z170GT7 doesn't feel like a value-oriented product. It really has me question some of the other brands for what they offer. The simple aesthetic design goes a long way, and the board has a heft to it that implies quality. The rear of the board has some solder strips around the socket to help with heat removal.


The area around the socket is pretty open, so nearly any cooler should mount up fine. Opening the socket, there is a complex mess of pins and SMDs in the middle.


Biostar equipped the Racing Z170GT7 with four DIMM slots rated to handle DIMMs of up to 3200 MHz. You can push for more, but Biostar has never been a brand with a focus on high memory clocks. To me, 3200 Mhz is the sweet spot for Skylake, so I am more than happy with what might seem a rather low specification here. There are four PCIe x16 slots on the Biostar Racing Z170GT7 (x16, x8, x4, x4 max respectively, dependent on which slots are populated) and three PCie x1 slots. All of these PCIe slots are PCIe 3.0


The backplate is filled with monitor connections; VGA, DVI-D, and dual HDMI plugs are present. There are five USB 3.0 plugs, a USB 3.1 Type-C plug, and your standard audio and networking ports, along with a PS/2 port for a mouse or keyboard. SATA connectivity consists of a trio of SATA Express ports (out of six standard SATA ports over the Intel Z170 Express PCH) and a single M.2 port (32 Gb/s).


The board's bottom edge is filled with USB connections on the left (as well as the front-panel audio plug), while the right has a TPM header, fan plugs, BIOS chips, and the front-button connections.