Supermicro C7Z170 SQ Motherboard

With the arrival of Skylake, Supermicro has launched a new motherboard product family, titled Supero, and the C7Z170- SQ is the flagship of the group. The C7Z170-SQ looks the part, with a red and black color scheme that easily makes this the most attractive board we’ve seen from the company to date. The C7Z7170-SQ also has all the goodies we’d expect, including a USB 3.1 Type-C port and an M.2 port. Supermicro ports much of its server expertise over to the gaming arena with the Supero family. For example, the PCB is designed with extra layers and using material qualified by Supermicro’s server standards. Top-grade X5R or X7R ceramic chip capacitors populate the motherboard to help withstand heat, while Japanese NPCAP solid-state capacitors deliver low equivalent series resistance and outstanding ripple reduction, according to Supermicro. The result is improved stability when overclocking and greater reliability in general. Lastly, the Supero motherboards are validated using Supermicro’s full-load server testing, which includes 100% loads for at least 150 hours. The C7Z170-SQ allows for fine-tuning of the BCLK, which can be adjusted from 100MHz to up to 210MHz in 1MHz increments. Onboard power, clear CMOS, and BIOS Restore buttons allow you to easily recover from any overclocking missteps. We also like that the C7Z170-SQ comes with a new, modern UEFI BIOS interface. When overclocking, it’s now extremely easy to make quick adjustments to the clock speed, BCLK ratio, and voltages, for instance. You can run DDR4 clocked at up to 3,600MHz, and the board’s four DIMM slots can handle up to 64GB of memory. When it comes to graphics, the C7Z170-SQ sports the triple-PCIe x16 slot configuration that is common among Z170 motherboards in the $200 price range. Dual GPU setups will run at x8/x8 speed, and three-way CrossFire is supported at x8/x4/x4. Supermicro made an interesting choice with the position of the M.2 connector, which is above the top PCIe x16 slot, rather than in between PCIe slots near the bottom of the PCB. And first blush, the design would seem to unnecessary compress the PCIe x16 slots, but the open space could be extremely helpful if you wish to use the M.2 slot for an M.2- to-U.2 adapter. There are also three PCIe x4 slots, but we’ll note Supermicro’s C7Z170-SQ delivered the top frame rate in Aliens vs. Predator (64.5fps) and was near the top for many of the other graphics tests, including 3DMark’s Fire Strike Extreme, where it delivered a Score of 6465 and a Graphics Score of 6840. The C7Z170-SQ also posted the highest Sequential Write speeds in CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2 and did well in the 4K Write tests. Reliability is always going to be a key benefit for Supermicro’s products, and this board shows off how well Supermicro can take those stability additions and translate them over to better overclocks. Onboard controls, such as the BIOS Restore button and debug LED, further enhance the experience. There’s also enough core additions for performance enthusiasts, including the 32Gbps M.2 and USB 3.1 Type-C ports, to allow for component flexibility in the future.