Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming 7 Review

Performance Analysis

Stock speed performance was on par with other boards we've tested so far, with the best result being in PCMark 8's photo editing test that loves lots of fast CPU cores. However, over the longer rendering benchmarks, the Z170X-Gaming 7 lost ground, although only by marginal amounts. It was also the most power-frugal ATX board we've tested so far, with the system as a whole drawing just 123W under load - only the micro-ATX Maximus VIII Gene was lower.

It also managed good 3D scores too, performing well in 3DMark Fire Strike and Unigine Valley, although in Total War: Attila, it was a little behind the Asus Maximus VIII Hero, which is the only other board we have for comparison here at the moment. Audio performance was something that needed to be strong and depending on which set of results you go by, it is.

Creative specifies its own method of testing with RightMark Audio Analyzer, which utilises the 'What you hear' playback redirect audio feed. This essentially bypasses our usual method of looping back the audio from line-out to line-in using a stereo mix, resulting in some pretty impressive numbers. Going the usual way and using a 3.5mm cable, the results aren't quite as amazing - in fact a fairly cheap Asus Xonar DGX 5.1 was better, but we're essentially talking about two different methods of testing here.

A 4.8GHz overclock unsurprisingly provided hefty boosts in most of our benchmarks with the Z170X-Gaming 7 sitting at or near the top of the graphs in most tests. While it needed a fairly high vcore, this didn't result in a massive amount of power being drawn under load either. It also performed well in the storage tests, although as per usual, the ASMedia SATA 6Gbps controller should be avoided for anything but optical drives or SSDs with data speeds less than 400MB/sec.

Conclusion

There's little to dislike with the Z170X-Gaming 7 - it is packed with features, looks great and overclocks well too. The colour scheme is likely to be polarising though, and as with the Asus Maximus VIII Hero, while there's a multi-colour lighting system, this doesn't mean you can colour match the board to your own system - it's still a predominantly black, white and red product.

At £170 it's similarly-priced to the Maximus VIII Hero, and while the latter lacks a second M.2 port, it just pips the Z170X-Gaming 7 to the post in other areas with a better EFI, vast array of software-based features and slightly more refined aesthetics. If you prefer the look of the Z170X-Gaming 7 though, or need two M.2 ports it certainly won't be a disappointment.