The Asus Z170M Plus in the flesh. These are some of the elements that make a difference to Hardwareslave, a good clean and techie looking component!
Interestingly there is no extensive information on the Capacitors used, though they are cooled. There was an issue with our sample, the heatsink was attached, but it was loose and could be moved. Good, because you could replace the thermal paste for something a little better, bad because these heat sinks should be secured in place.
The Chipset heatsink is secure however, and it’s hollow, a nice design touch. Not sure if it makes a difference though, but it’s a little better than the generic lumps.
Storage is well catered for, with room for one M.2 Socket with both SATA & PCIE mode. One SATA Express port, and six SATA 6Gbs ports which support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10.
Asus Z170M Plus mATX Motherboard Review
Package - 7.5
Performance - 8.5
Price - 8
Consumer Experience - 8
8
It's hard to see why Asus would call this a flagship micro-ATX motherboard, it just doesn't have the prestige or the package. We would have also thought that a flagship motherboard would have both SLi and CrossFireX support. So we are not sure on the whole flagship front, but we do like this little gem a lot. It doesn't throw any heavyweight punches, or come with amazing accessories, it's just arrives ready to go and performs really well.
