Edit 1/7/2017- I added a Samsung 960 EVO M.2 SSD. The board recognized it immediately. I installed windows from a USB stick in a matter of minutes and everything works great. I downloaded the latest drivers from Samsung, though it seemed to be working fine without them. If you are going to put Windows on an M.2, I would highly recommend unplugging your other drives until its fully installed, then once its good to go, go grab all your data from your old drives. Interestingly enough, while the M.2 has increased my boot times, it still takes about 20 seconds on average. Oh well
This board has been great. It's basically an update to the original Z170-PRO, with a few small changes/upgrades.
PROS:
-The IO Shield is not the super flimsy thin metal that boards like the Z170-A have. Praise the sun!
-The lighting is cool. While not quite as customizeable as it could be, still cool
-A decent amount of USB ports and headers. Three USB 2.0 headers and one USB 3.0 header
-The look is neutral, but cool. Will work with any build really.
-The UEFI/BIOS is easy to use. You can update the BIOS directly from within rather than needing to boot to windows.
-Overclocking manually was simple and easy
-M.2 capability
-Comes with some sata cables and other accessories
-There are lots of other pros like the 3d printing mount and such, but I won't list them all. Read the specs!
CONS:
-Biggest con, and I can't even be sure the board is to blame, boot times are a little slow. Quickest I got was 18 seconds after disabling every setting I could in Windows. Before that it was taking anywhere from 45 seconds to a minute. And that's with an SSD as the boot drive, an I5 6600k, nice PSU, fairly normal stuff.
-Kind of an extension of the first con- sometimes it's like it needs to post twice? I hit restart (or power on) and the Asus screen pops up, then suddenly it kind of powers down again ( I can see my keyboard and mouse lights go off) and then its right back to it.
-Not really a con, but had some issues before updating to the latest BIOS version. (Do it, its easy)
-I cannot get the EZ tuning wizard to successfully overclock my system. In the end I did it manually and it worked great
-The lights don't turn all the way off when you shut your computer down. This may bother you if its in your bedroom. Not really an issue
-Apparently no ROG RGB strip headers is an gripe some people have? I honestly didn't even know they had strips, as I use an NZXT Hue+ in my case, and it works great.
I like the board a lot. Other than those weird boot issues which aren't really a problem after you turn the computer on, its great. Looks really great in an RGB build. Make sure you update the BIOS to the latest version. I will soon be installing an M.2 SSD and reinstalling Windows 10 onto that. If it makes a big difference I will be sure and update this review.
For this price point, I would really recommend it over the other Z170 boards that are under $200. It feels much more premium than something like the Z170-A (a board I got which was defective. That ended up working out because it led me to this one)
| RAM | DDR4 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 1600 MHz |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
