The motherboard is a required piece of equipment for any PC, and yet it often goes unnoticed. It can be hard to pick one out with all the techno-babble that gets thrown around in PC part spaces, but if you want a computer you have to have one. I know figuring out a good motherboard can make it hard for consumers to build their first PC, or even upgrade their old one.
The ASUS PRIME Z270-A motherboard is an ideal middle ground between quality, aesthetics, functionality, and price. The price is often the biggest sticking point for any motherboard. As long as it has all the basic features covered and will last a decent amount of time any motherboard can function well, but what about the other features that this one has to offer?
Technology
The ASUS PRIME Z270-A comes with a Z270 chipset. With this, the motherboard can take full advantage of the Intel® Kaby Lake 7th generation processor straight out of the box.
The Asus PRIME Z270-A is a competitively priced board perfectly suited for high-performance systems and overclocking. All this without all the unneeded bells and whistles that you might find on comparable products.
The most notable feature about this motherboard is ASUS’ 5-Way Optimization which automatically manages your system to ensure the most efficient CPU usage and dynamically adapts to your specific build. It can take just one click to configure your PC to optimal settings automatically and eliminates complex manual tuning.
This does help a lot with basic functionality. Unless you plan on going for a lot of specific tunings to get certain attributes of your PC running a particular way then this eliminates the need to dig around tunning sections yourself.
The ASUS PRIME Z270-A also comes with a comprehensive fan control system, Fan Xpert 4. It features numerous temperature sensors, all-in-one water cooling, fan auto-detection, high-amp support, smart protection, and practical noise management.
These are the type of features I find worth having in a motherboard. Practical and useful ones that limit heating issues and minimize the inherently loud sound of a working motherboard. It’s always worth it to have extra cooling systems in place.
Design
I never think aesthetics are an important factor when designing a motherboard. Motherboards that focus a lot on their looks tend to fair towards the less desirable ends of the motherboard spectrum. This is especially true when the focus on looks results in an increase in price, or lack in quality.
Thankfully, The ASUS PRIME Z270-A is designed with functionality and efficiency in mind. Its simple design provides the user with a powerful system that is not overflowing with expensive cosmetic features.
That doesn’t mean that the board itself is downright ugly though. The black metal components are paired with white accents, as well as the occasional piece of glistening steel. It gives it a genuine slick look of a piece of functional hardware.
If you happen to prefer motherboards that don’t light up to excess like me, the ASUS PRIME Z270-A only features one RGB LED path lighting for the audio section. This keeps the lighting simple and at the back of the design of the board.
If your preferences lean towards LED full boards there is still the option for more lights. It is easy to add your own RGB LED strips to the motherboard and control them with the ASUS Aura controller and supporting software.
The onboard AURA lighting control software creates a visual experience that can be tailored to fit anyone’s preferences. The RBG LED strip and any aftermarket LEDs work together with a wide variety of modes.
For example, the LEDs can breathe, strobe, cycle, pulse to music, convey CPU temperature and even integrate with other compatible hardware. The ASUS Aura Sync technology creates a central hub to control all your LED-enabled devices in unison.
LEDs are never a feature I put all my attention in. Especially in a motherboard, they should be a cute little addition and nothing more. The ASUS PRIME Z270-A makes sure that the RGB LED doesn’t take up any more energy than it should following this train of thought.
Other Notes
There are a few more parts to this motherboard I want to go over still that I haven’t touched on much yet. These are features and choices in the making of the hardware that lead to minor additions that could sway a purchasing decision I feel.
To start, the ASUS PRIME Z270-A utilizes a Realtek S1220A audio codec to create a solid sonic experience for users. This addresses a variety of frustrating sound issues that many have experienced on older, outdated motherboards.
The audio codec features a power pre-regulator to eliminate power-input noise, which can be extremely frustrating when working with sound. Other protective components ensure a high-quality sound output. These include audio shielding, separate left, and right tracks, a dynamic amplifier, and a de-pop circuit.
These features all together minimize sound-related issues and keep the motherboard at a decent level of audio power. It won’t be cracking easy in this regard I feel.
Furthermore, it features DDR4 memory, one-click overclocking, multi-GPU support, triple display functionality, all-in-one cooling, a graphical mouse-controlled BIOS, USB 3.1, USB-C connectors, Intel® Ethernet connection, SafeSlot GPU protection, 3D printing templates, and much more.
This motherboard doesn’t feature onboard Wi-Fi capabilities, but it comes packaged with Turbo LAN network-optimization software to assist anyone in lowering their lag when online. It allows for customizable packet prioritization and even offers advanced settings for individuals with the skill-set to utilize them.
Pros And Con
With everything I’ve talked about so far, I think it’s a good idea to line up the pros and the cons that the ASUS PRIME Z270-A offers. I want to allow the most informed choices possible to be made, so I’ll be giving what I think are the biggest things for and against it.
Pros
- All-In-One Cooling
- Compatible with Intel® Kaby Lake processor
- High quality onboard audio hardware
- Graphical mouse-operated BIOS
- Competitively priced
Cons
- Not visually outstanding
- No innovative features
Final Thoughts
The biggest draw I see in the ASUS PRIME Z270-A is its simple yet effective design. It’s not a flashy motherboard with a bunch of weird tricks and features that take center stage. Instead, it’s a piece of hardware that focuses on the basics.
This is a good thing. It aims to work well and do its job as a motherboard before anything else. It doesn’t fall into similar trappings of other hardware that somewhere along the line forgets what its purpose even is inside a sea of aimless features.
This also leads to this motherboard being far from the most expensive out there. Compared to its competition it’s decently priced. It’s not the cheapest motherboard out there, but for its power range, it’s more than fairly priced.
I recommend the ASUS PRIME Z270-A to anyone that is looking for a stronger motherboard at a decent price. It offers a high level of quality without trying to smokescreen away flaws with a bag of tricks. It’s good, clean, simple reliability that gets harder to come across with each new generation of hardware.
