Asus Z170 Pro Gaming Motherboard

Z170I PRO GAMING Mini ITX board is indeed tiny as I'm used to setting up full size boards, I was a little bit stunned at the size of this, but my wife wanted a small system having previously had Shuttles. I set about installing it into a Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Cube Case. My memory also newly bought was Corsair CMK16GX4M2B3000C15 Vengeance LPX 16 GB although High profile would have fitted with my cooler but I was happy to get low profile this time and an SSD ADATA SP550 M.2 2280 240GB plus two hard drives from her dead shuttle. The PSU I bought new was a EVGA 600 W 80+ non Modular, it cost £40 and is more than adequate, super quiet and the unused leads curled into small rings at the base. The GPU is an old AMD MSI OC 7870 which will be replaced as soon as the new Nvidia 1060/70 drops to a reasonable price, then she can have my 970 GTX lol. TBH I really enjoyed installing the board,its lovely quality, really well made and thought out. Everything worked spot on from turning it on, Win 10 installed, all drivers copied off the cd onto a usb drive (no cd in system) flawless and so fast just make sure you don't install the bloat ware and scroll down to the bottom in case you miss something. The Bios is really great for the novice and the enthusiast just needs taking slowly as you work things out. The on board sound is stunning, I have some HyperX 1 headphones and it sounds so much better than my Asrock Extreme 6 1155 mobo. The processor is a Intel Core I5-6600K Processor, The temps are running at 20c approx idle 40c under load no OC but I know there is plenty of scope to OC if I chose too. I'ts all cooled with a Cooler Master Seidon 120V ver.2 Liquid CPU Cooler "RL-S12V-24PK-R2. Ive used this cooler on a 1155 system and not to impressed with it but its on a par with a good air system but with this chip its great and ideal in a small case. Asus software is I think one of the best for OC, fan control etc and this is no exception. I could go on for ages but to sum it up for £129 this board is a bargain and really high quality, I'm trying to convince the wife she should have my system which runs brilliantly but she having non of it I'm afraid :-( All the other stuff I've bought has worked seamlessly with this board The case was £35, Psu £40, Ram DDR4 16gb 3000mhz £75. M.2 drive 240gb £63. I5-6600K £210, Cooler £37 total £589. Its crying out for a decent GPU nothing less than a 970 tbh but its a very good system at a very good price based on an excellent tiny motherboard. If you want a small system and like gaming then this board should be at the top of your list. Just to add my case has a removable base panel the same as the sides and top so if you have to get to the M.2 drive it should be pretty simple, I've read a few reviews where this is is concern with this motherboard but the Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Cube Case resolves that.

Works great.Loaded the bios into USB drive and updated smoothly to latest 1206 bios. Reset your bios to Optimized Default before doing bios flash update as unstable XMP ram settings can corrupt the bios.Easily 4.6ghz overclock on 6600k. VRM isn't hot with the cpu heatsink fan providing some airflow over the rear vrm heatsink.1 + 3 fan headers with speed control. I did not use the 5th CPU OPTIONAL fan header as it appears to not have individual control in bios.2 minor problems that persisted with bios update. (stock bios September 2015, updated to March 2016)Custom fan profile in bios is bugged , it does not save. I have to choose Turbo preset with voltage control not PWM.Unable to boot via USB. Blackscreen for a few seconds and it goes to option 2 which is my SSD. I temporarily plugged in a DVD drive with my side panel open.3 tips for newbie users.DO NOT use the automatic 1-click overclocking. It puts excessive voltage into your cpu chip. It doesn't go through proper stress testing to ensure system stability for day-to-day usage. There is no shortcut to learning overclock.Ram overclock should be after you find the highest stable multiplier, I see some users enable ram XMP immediately on their new rig and proceed to overclock, that is wrong and may hinder your highest cpu overclock.Under digi+ vrm settings in bios , select LLC load line calibration. Level 4 is good for this motherboard. Adaptive did not work in a few bios after September 2015 but I can say the current March 2016 bios have working adaptive voltage.There were some user reports on higher speed ram ~3000mhz not working on XMP with this board with the asus USA representative at overclock.net forum saying this 4-layer board being too "inferior" to support higher speed ram. I suggest you don't get your hopes up.Buy 3000-3200mhz ram if the price difference is small. But expect it to run at 2400mhz CL14-16-16-31 at worst case scenario. I bought 2400mhz corsair and didn't have any issue manually input the CL14.

So I recieved this 2 days ago and set it up on the same day.I upgraded from a GA-H110M-S2H motherboard since it was very limited; average audio, 1 PCIe slot, no support for the overclocking of my i7 6700k CPU (this was my first PC setup so i wasn't aware the motherboard controls overclocking).Honestly changing the motherboard felt like rebuilding the PC back from square 1 but it's always a nice experience. I used the Artic MX4 thermal paste this time (idle CPU temps dropped from 25C to 17-20C) so that's something else I recommend (was previously using stock thermal pad that came with Corsair H60 liquid cooler).Positive changes:- 2 free RAM slots- Extra PCIe slots- More SATA connectors + M.2 support- cool lighting effects- NOTICEABLY CLEARER AND LOUDER AUDIO- overclocking support (have not tested yet)- Nice BIOS, loads fast after the second boot.One problem:- The Type-A USB 3.1 slot seems unnecessary to me. I have nothing with a proper type-A 3.1 cable to go into that port, nor could I find any online, they're all type-C. Anyway, I tried plugging my mouse into that slot and it began to "miss" a lot of movements. Perhaps it'd be very good for file transfer though all USB storage comes with 3.0 eitherway... which makes the type A USB 3.1 slot useless. I don't use all the USB slots so this problem doesn't affect the 5* rating I leave.Probably the best motherboard at this price range.