Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX Motherboard Review

Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 Overview
The Z170N-Gaming 5 is a mini-ITX motherboard so it is very small. If you didn’t know all mini-ITX motherboards are 17.0cm x 17.0cm. This is a G1 Gaming motherboard so it follows the black and red color design that we’ve seen on other current G1 Gaming boards. There is even a G1 Gaming logo on one of the heatsinks.

Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX Motherboard

Starting at the center of the board we have the Intel 1151 socket, which supports Intel’s 6th generation Core Skylake processors. Conditioning the CPU is a 5-phase VRM. The power delivery components are covered by a small heatsink, which connects to the PCH heatsink by a pretty hefty heatpipe. All around the board you will see long lifespan durable 10K black solid caps.

Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX Motherboard

Above the CPU socket we find the 8-pin EPS connector, a 4-pin CPU fan header, and a 4-pin system fan header.

Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX Motherboard

Moving over to the far end of the motherboard you have your 24-pin ATX power connector, front panel headers, two SATA Express ports, and a clear CMOS jumper. Keep in mind that if you don’t plan on using SATA Express that opens up four SATA 6GB/s ports. I never like to see clear CMOS jumpers these days, buttons are just so much easier for the user, but I can see why Gigabyte went with a jumper here. Behind the ports you have your two DDR4 DIMM slots. The board supports up to 32 GB of DDR4-3300 (O.C.) memory.

Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX Motherboard

Right behind the DDR4 DIMM slots are two SATA 6GB/s ports. So if you count the ones on the SATA Express ports you have a total of six SATA 6GB/s ports. Along the bottom of the board is the PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot. This of course is the only PCI-Express slot on the board. Gigabyte has added their metal shielding to the slot, which reinforces and protects the PCI slot. Above the slot to the left are headers for front panel audio and USB 2.0. Moving up a little bit there is a USB 3.0 header as well.

Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX Motherboard

Looking at the rear I/O, from left to right you have a combination PS/2 port, two USB 3.0 ports, antenna connectors for the WiFi and Bluetooth, DVI, HDMI, USB 3.1 Type-C, Gigabit Ethernet powered by Killer’s E2200 chip, a third USB 3.0 port, a USB 3.1 Type-A port (red), and your audio connections. The audio connections as well as the HDMI port are gold plated.

Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX Motherboard

Flipping the board over we find the M.2 slot. This is a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 slot so you get up to 32 Gb/s of bandwidth! This slot means that you can have an M.2 SSD installed and don’t even have to worry about any other drives.

Gigabyte Z170N-Gaming 5 Mini-ITX Motherboard

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