Asus Z170-A ATX DDR4 Motherboards

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 wellThis 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)

Always trust Asus motherboardsThe Z170-A is a good mid-level motherboard for the intel 1151 platform. This board has all of the normal features you would want, without some of the extra, perhaps more frivolous features the higher end boards have.I really like the look of the board itself, the white and blue accents are a nice touch. The pcb looks black in the pictures on Amazon, but its actually a really dark bown. You can't really notice though once its in a case.Everything is laid out perfectly and is easily accessible. The RAM slots are spaced out enough from the cpu socket that RAM with normal heat spreaders will fit with a larger air cooler like the Cooler Master hyper 212 evo. Everything on the board is clearly labeled, which makes setup when building a breeze. I particularly like the orientation of the sata ports, very easy to access unlike some other boards I've used in the past.The UEFI bios is awesome, typical Asus quality there. Its very easy to use and has mouse and keyboard support. You can control literally everything here, but "normal" options like fan profiles, RAM timings and cpu overclocking options are clearly described and easily accessible. I was able to easily select the appropriate XMP profile for my 3000 MHz DDR4 ram. I plan to do a manual overclock of my i5-6600k, but for now I went with the Auto Tune feature which easily overclocked my 6600k 4.2 ghz stable. The auto tuner asks what your use case is (gaming, general use, etc) and even asks what type of cooler you have installed (stock, air tower, liquid, etc) and calculates a safe overclock. The feature did its magic in a few minutes, and I had a 6600k overclocked to 4.2 ghz and RAM at 3000 MHz, with cpu temps of about 60-65C under stress test. You can even set temp thresholds for the auto OC if you desire (i.e., I want the highest overclock I can get without exceeding 70C cpu temp). The auto tune feature has certainly come a long way from what it was in my previous i5-2500k build, and I think most people would be just fine using it for their overclock. If you do want to go manual though, there is every possible setting you could want available for tweaking.The onboard sound is actually really great on this board. The sound on my previous Asus P8p67 board was really flat and not very good, but this board has excellent sound. Clear and decent bass.The only negative with this board is the included I/O shield. In short, its a piece of junk. Worst I/O shield I've ever come across. It was a pain to get into my case, and trying to get the motherboard lined up with it was near impossible. I almost decided to leave it out, but was able to get it to fit with some persistence. The problem is that the metal tabs on the shield are super annoying, and the shield itself is flimsy with no back cushion or anything. Still, it ended up being a 15 minute annoyance that won't bother you once everything is installed.Overall a great "standard" motherboard for the Z170 platform. In the $100-150 range, I think the Z170-a or the Z170 pro gaming are your best bets.