We left all of the fancy body kit in place during our testing, though. Removing the shrouds could also improve airflow over that left VRM heatsink. These pieces are purely cosmetic, so for those who aren’t fans of the look, the shrouds can easily be removed using five small screws on the underside of the board. The smaller half sits below, and it’s illuminated by the LED Trace Path lighting on the audio section of the board. That plastic shroud is made up of two separate pieces, the largest of which hangs over the left VRM heatsink and the port cluster. The underlying PCB is pure black, and the Gigabyte-exclusive “Durablack” Nippon Chemi-Con capacitors from previous generation boards make an appearance, as well. The VRM and chipset heatsinks are spruced up with snowy accents, and a large, white plastic shroud adorned with the G1 Gaming logo runs down the left-hand side of the board. The red-and-black color scheme of previous G1 Gaming boards continues with Gigabyte’s 100-series products, but Gigabyte has gone for a high-contrast look by adding lots of white, too. And of course, it’s built on the Z170 chipset, with its bevy of USB 3.0 ports, Gen3 PCIe lanes, and support for the NVM Express storage control standard. Perhaps most unique are the Intel-powered USB 3.1 ports, courtesy of the Alpine Ridge controller. Dual Gigabit Ethernet controllers: one Intel-powered, the other a Killer.
Three SATA Express ports and two SATA 6Gbps ports. Dual M.2 slots with four lanes of PCIe Gen3 connectivity each. Consider its riches: three PCIe x16 slots, two of which hang off the CPU.
At $219.99, the Gaming 7 sits comfortably in the high-end price bracket, and its feature list reflects that fact. Today, we’re going to look at Gigabyte’s Z170X-Gaming 7. Gigabyte’s 100-series G1 Gaming lineup starts with the entry-level H170-Gaming 3 for $114.99, and it tops out with the ultra high-end Z170X-Gaming G1 at a nosebleed-inducing $499.99. The company makes an abundance of boards that combine the Z170 chipset with a full-sized ATX form factor and gaming-friendly features. The ERA of gaming-flavored everything is upon us, and Gigabyte’s motherboards are no exception.