Introduction

What happens when a brand that mostly focuses on entry-level stuff offers a high-end product? Well, you get what we have here, the Biostar Z270GT8. A full-size motherboard with all the bells and whistles, the Biostar Z270GT8 offers something no other board I have had my hands on for Intel's Z270 platform offers... the Biostar Z270GT8 has a total of six PCIe x16 slots. Six! Given the limited PCIe connectivity that is native on the platform, the Biostar Z270GT8 definitely caught my interest.

So you are of course wondering how those slots connect to the CPU and what connectivity they have. I was too. According to the box, there are two PCIe 3.0 x16 and four PCIe 3.0 x4 slots. Might make for a great base for a bitcoin rig, perhaps? Mix that in with Biostar's excellent audio designs, a couple U.2 ports, USB 3.1 Type-C, RGB LED functions, and a host of other features, like dual BIOSes and such, and you've got what appears to be a rather excellent base for a decent high-end rig. While Biostar might not be the first name you think of for decent high-end products, it is clear that they are making an effort to change that.

Specifications

Packaging and Contents

The Biostar Z270GT8 comes in a box similar to that of all the other Z270 Biostar products I've seen, which is a bit unassuming. Yet at the same time, it's so basic that I love it.


Open the box and the board is up top and the accessories are below. You can already see that there is a carbon fiber pattern all over this board.


There are very few accessories in the box. A full list of what is included is below:

• Manual, support CD, I/O shield;
• 4x SATA data cables

Board Layout

The racing theme here on the Biostar Z270GT8 is pretty obvious; checkered flags and carbon fiber are all over the place, but are still subtle enough not to be overly done. The rear of the board is boring in comparison to the front. Actually, I was a bit surprised to see that the VRM didn't have any cooling strips under the board's CPU VRM area, something Biostar has had on many of their products.


The socket area is surrounded by a rather large 12+1 CPU power design, with some rather high-end-looking parts. I'm all confused because this doesn't seem to be the Biostar I am used to. There's a single-phase DIMM power design along with four DIMM slots rated for speeds of up to 3600 MHz.


All the expansion slots are physical full-length slots, but looking at the solder pinouts on the rear of the board, three are pinned for x16 connectivity and three for x4. Specifications list the electrical maximums at x16, x8, x4, x4, x4, x4. The rear I/O panel is fitted with a PS/2 port, four USB 3.0 plugs, dual HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB 3.1 Type-A and Type-C. LAN, SPDIF, and analog audio plugs finish what is to be found here.


The board's bottom edge is ready for a ton of internal connectivity; there are many USB 2.0 headers, fan plugs, etc. You might spy dual-socketed BOIS chips here too.


LAN connectivity is provided by an Intel I-219V controller and has some built-in fortifications against surges. Drive connectivity sees a sextet of SATA ports and a duo of U.2 plugs.


The provided M.2 port is sandwiched between the CPU socket and PCIe slots, and has a large cooler on top of it, there to help keep your M.2 device cool. As you can see in the picture above, the heatsink is a long finned piece with a carbon fiber top.