BIOSTAR RACING Z270GT4 LGA1151 Motherboard Review
Peter Donnell / 7 years ago
A Closer Look
The RACING motherboard isn’t just a fun name, it’s also something that carries over into the design of the motherboard. As you can see, there is a chequered flag design over the PCB, which is pretty cool. You’ll also find some more flag decal on the VRM heat sink, as well as a few touches of fake carbon fiber to give it that super car vibe. This isn’t a crazy high-end motherboard by any means, and it does look a little spartan in terms of hardware, but it’s certainly not.
First up, we’ve got a few decent looking and chunky chokes on the CPU power delivery. It takes its power from a single 8-pin PWM connector, but that should be more than enough to deliver good overclocks on the Z270 chipset; especially for a motherboard of this size.
There are 4 x DDR4 DIMMS on this motherboard, allowing for (up to) quad-channel memory. It’ll operate up to 3200 MHz, which is more than enough for most users, although a bit of tinkering should get that higher with a heavily overclocked CPU. There are some other nice features here too, such as the onboard touch sensitive power controls, as well as one-touch overclocking and eco modes. There’s an LN2 switch, which I suspect will never be needed, but could be handy for those wanting to get more in-depth with the CPU ratios.
connectivity is pretty good too, with a few fan connections dotted around the board, USB 3.1, USB 2.0, and lighting headers. There are two full-size PCIe lanes, allowing for dual-GPU configurations, and two 1x PCIe lanes that are good for add-in cards.
There are 6 x SATA 6Gbps connections, so more than enough for a good few hard drives. You’ll also find a pair of U.2 connections and a single onboard M.2 mount.
The rear I/O has a bit of old and a bit of new. You’ll find it comes with PS2 and VGA connections for the older stuff. However, there’s also HDMI and DP with 4K output support, and USB Typc-C built-in too.