The Board - Layout

ECS's boards have carried a fairly simple aesthetic for a long time, and the ECS Z170-LIGHTSABER continues that tradition. Everything is black, front and rear.


The socket area feels a bit closed in with the large coolers looming over the socket. There's four DIMM slots with official support for up to 64 GB at 3200 MHz.


Three PCIe x16 slots and four PCIe x1 slots (all of which are PCIe 3.0) are ready for your expansion cards. A single M.2 slot is present; 2280 devices and smaller only!


There are a ton of USB ports on the rear I/O panel, along with all the other usual suspects. It's nice to see a Clear CMOS switch here too. SATA connectivity consists of eight ports in total - four from an ASMedia controller and the others from the Intel Z170 chipset.


There's several buttons along the board's bottom edge, along with a couple fan headers. Both audio and front-panel ports are in the right places for easy cable management.