The ASRock Z270 Supercarrier Motherboard Review: 4-way SLI and 5 Gigabit Ethernet on Kaby Lake

ASRock Z270 Supercarrier Conclusion

The Z270 Supercarrier is ASRock’s Intel Z270 chipset flagship motherboard, designed to support up to quad SLI/Crossfire-X graphics card configurations and an extensive number of storage devices. It is a motherboard primarily intended to tempt designers & content creators that usually require very high graphics processing power and storage capacity. Nevertheless, in an attempt to expand the potential market of the motherboard as much as possible, ASRock included features and options that would be of interest to other users with large budgets, such as enthusiasts who want to build very powerful and overclocked gaming PCs.

It is the extra Broadcom PEX 8747 chipset that adds extra PCIe lanes which allows for both the inclusion of four full length PCIe slots, plus for a more extensive storage device configuration. The Z270 Supercarrier has three M.2 PCIe ×4 slots that do not share any lanes with any PCIe card slot, allowing for full operation alongside a fully populated set of PCIe slots. There are two SATA Express and two SATA 6 Gbps ports provided by the Z270 chipset, plus four additional SATA 6 Gbps ports provided by the ASMedia ASM1061 controller, with the ASMedia controller connected to the Broadcom PEX 8747 chipset. The Z270 Supercarrier also has an extensive number of USB device ports and internal headers, allowing for a maximum of six USB 2.0 devices, nine USB 3.0 devices, and two USB 3.1 Type-C devices. It also has COM and TPM headers, which are often useful for professional systems.

ASRock installed three different wired network controllers on the Z270 Supercarrier, plus one wireless controller. The AQUANTIA 5 Gbps controller makes sense on such a motherboard that is trying to differentiate itself from the crowd. Although 5/10 Gbps equipment is currently very difficult to acquire, the controller will be there for when such devices become more readily available. The Intel’s Gigabit I219-V controller is also a sensible choice, as it is a proven high-performance interface that maximizes compatibility with current equipment. What we found excessive is the third wired network controller, the Intel Gigabit I211-AT, a controller that is optimized for efficiency over performance. It does support Dual LAN via teaming but, ironically, teaming is unsupported under Windows 10. We feel that ASRock could have installed something else in the place of the I211-AT that could be more useful than a third network interface.

In terms of quality, ASRock made very few compromises. The used components are some of the best that are available for commercial motherboards and the circuitry of the Z270 Supercarrier is the best that we have seen on any Z270 motherboard to this date. ASRock’s engineers thought of the layout well, making the Z270 Supercarrier an easy motherboard to work with, especially considering that they managed to place all of this hardware on an ATX PCB. Aesthetics are a subject that lies in the eye of the beholder, and also a subject that hardly matters for most professionals, yet ASRock’s engineers did try to make the Z270 Supercarrier an aesthetically appealing motherboard with a unique paint job and RGB lighting.

The problem with the Z270 Supercarrier is that the high retail price risks making it unattractive to the group of users it is primarily targeted at. The advantage that the Intel Z270 chipset has now, and until it is replaced by another cost-effective solution, is the combination of competitively priced motherboards and processors. A Z270 motherboard that retails for $350 is treading deep into the territory of newer socket X299 and socket X399 platforms, where the CPU and/or DRAM can be more expensive but are substantially better for productivity purposes. The Z270 Supercarrier could be a practical choice for gamers who want to build triple and quad SLI systems, as higher core frequencies have an advantage over multiple cores in today’s games, yet still they would take a risk with future titles that could be optimized for processors with more than 4 cores.