The Z270 also offers full control over the processor’s various knobs and dials, allowing overclockers to tweak to their hearts’ content. The Z270 platform also gives us some welcome enthusiast-friendly features, like the ability to split the processor’s sixteen Gen3 PCIe lanes across multiple slots for multi-GPU graphics configs. For those feeling the bandwidth pinch, there’s always Intel’s high-end desktop platform built around Broadwell-E, with up to 40 on-die Gen3 PCIe lanes. This is unlikely to change until we see a DMI link composed of Gen4 PCI Express lanes. This provides for up to 32Gb/s (4GB/s) of bandwidth, which is far outstripped by the potential bandwidth of the chipset’s 30 flexible I/O lanes. One thing that hasn’t changed is that the Z270 chipset itself is connected to the processor using the same four Gen3 PCIe lanes that make up the DMI link that we saw with the Z170. While it remains to be seen what the first round of products sporting 3D XPoint memory will look like, only the combination of Kaby Lake CPUs and 200-series motherboards will be Optane Memory ready. Point is: mobo makers have options.Īnother advantage of the Z270 over its predecessor is the ability to support Intel’s new Optane Memory caching products.

Or, mobo makers could settle on a happy mid-point.

A motherboard could be designed to give consumers the maximum number of PCIe lanes for expansion cards, or the designer could swing the pendulum the other direction to maximize the number of USB 3.0 ports. Some of the lanes that can be used for PCI Express could be multiplexed with USB 3.0 and SATA ports. This allows the chipset to support up to 24 general purpose PCIe lanes, compared to 20 in the Z170. The “up to” qualifier exists because the motherboard maker is given some degree of flexibility with how it wants to allocate the chipset’s flexible I/O lanes. The biggest upgrade for the Z270 chipset comes from the addition of four more PCIe Gen3 lanes. The Z270 platform caters to enthusiast builders, and like the Kaby Lake CPUs themselves, Z270 offers builders some minor improvements over Z170 before it. Alongside the processors themselves, Intel is also releasing the 200-series chipsets to ride shotgun. Intel’s desktop Kaby Lake CPUs have arrived.

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