Supermicro C7Z170-SQ

This is the beginning time we have featured a Supermicro motherboard in i of our roundups and that is downward to the fact that the vast majority of their products are designed for the server industry. The company has been creating a select few consumer grade motherboards for a few years now, though nosotros encounter the C7Z170-SQ as a serious push into this market.

Supermicro is hoping that its potent make proper name in the server space will help push button their products into the consumer marketplace. This makes sense and information technology is probably why consumer brands such as Gigabyte make a lot of noise well-nigh their server class "Blackness Serial" server quality motherboards.

Similar the MSI Z170A Gaming M7 and most of the Z170 boards featured in our roundup, the C7Z170-SQ features three full length PCIe x16 slots and it can support a single graphics card with x16 bandwidth or two sharing the primary slot bandwidth for a x8/x8 configuration.

Those wanting to run 3-manner setups will be limited to x8/x4/x4 bandwidth whereas other boards offering x8/x8/x4.

Some other issue for multi-GPU setups is the fact that the principal and secondary PCIe slots are only separated by a single slot. This ways dual-slot cards volition nigh touch one another and seriously limit air catamenia.

The only advantage to this design is that the full length M.2 slot can be accessed all the time, assuming you don't install a massive air-libation on the CPU. It's worth pointing out that the M.two slot is not SATA compatible, and so will only support PCIe Thou.two SSDs.

Along with the M.2 slot the only other storage options include the six SATA 6Gb/s ports provided by the Z170 chipset. This means there aren't whatsoever third party SATA controllers found on the C7Z170-SQ and at that place aren't whatsoever SATA Express ports either, though the latter shouldn't exist an issue. In total, the C7Z170-SQ offers seven storage interfaces and all of them tin can be utilized at the same time.

The C7Z170-SQ uses the aforementioned Realtek ALC1150 codec as about of the other Z170 motherboards in this price range though in that location aren't whatsoever marketing buzzwords hither, like Audio Boost 3 or SupremeFX 2022. The ALC1150 codec supporting vii.ane channel HD sound isn't found on an isolated section of the PCB, in that location aren't whatsoever Nichicon capacitors nor is in that location a 600Ω headphones amplifier.

Like its audio, the lath's networking is very bones, lacking wireless options and offering a single Gigabit LAN connection through the Intel I219V.

When it comes to connectivity, the board only offers the standard six USB 3.0 ports and just two of them are institute on the I/O console. The boosted ii USB 3.0 headers constitute on the motherboard are found in two separate locations which we don't treat. Giving the C7Z170-SQ some credibility as a modernistic Z170 motherboard is a unmarried USB 3.1 Type-C port on the I/O panel.

Speaking of the I/O panel, users volition detect a single PS/ii port, ii USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 3.1 port, HDMI output, DisplayPort, DVI port, optical sound output, Gigabit LAN port and 6 sound jacks.

On the software side of things Supermicro hasn't developed any Windows utilities however so users must have to the UEFI BIOS.

When compared to Asrock, MSI, Asus and Gigabyte, it's obvious that Supermicro has little experience developing consumer grade motherboards.

While functional, the BIOS is much more difficult to navigate and doesn't look nearly as nice every bit designs from its competitors. The BIOS isn't at all user friendly and will certainly overwhelm novice users.