Asus TUF Z270 Mark 1 Review

Asus has brought out yet another power-packed motherboard designed for a 7^th generation LGA1151 socket with several connectivity options. The motherboard has AURA sync RGB lighting with the ability to synchronise effects across an ever-expanding ecosystem of AURA Sync-enabled products. The motherboard is primarily geared to attract gamers, though it has a lot of features for other consumers as well, who are looking to upgrade their PC.

Backed by features

Asus is promoting it as the ultimate force, with its several attractive features. We can say that this motherboard is better than what we usually come across. TUF can go easily with both gamers and professionals. It supports a wide range of workstation graphics cards. Its ASUS Aura Sync technology offering full RGB lighting control comes with a variety of pre-set modes for on-board LED illumination.

Mark 1 is implemented with DRAM layout. The third-generation ASUS T-Topology delivers new DDR4-overclocking dynamics, enabling the user to push memory frequencies further up to 3866 MHz. You don't require any technical expertise to experience the overclocking performance. It has the Thermal Radar 2+ that incorporates the TurboV Processing Unit (TPU) for efficient operation with voltage control and monitoring. It is equipped with dual Intel Gigabit Ethernet connectors, which facilitate your data to move swiftly and efficiently.

In addition to the above, it is quite strong because of the exclusive TUF Fortifier that doesn’t let the motherboard buckle under the weight of heavy graphics cards and CPU coolers.

Amazing performer

Despite having a high price tag, the motherboard demonstrates really great performance. We used Intel Core i7-7700K processor (up to 4.5 GHz clock speed, 8M cache, 4 cores, 8 threads, processor graphics), 8 GB Zion DDR4 SDRAM, 4GB Gigabyte GPU and Hitachi 500GB HDD.

We first started with gaming performance. Hence, we installed different games including Shadow of Mordor, Thief, NFS etc. It was able to handle graphics and overall performance was great. We didn't notice any visible lag in the performance during the test. Moreover, we left one game running at the back and played another one. Still, only a slight delay was seen, otherwise it was running fine.

To check its day-to-day real life performance, we opened more than 20 tabs in Chrome and Mozilla web browsers. Simultaneously, we operated MS office and some other applications. We were able to switch between apps without any performance issues and were also able to browse the net. Even while overclocking, it was steady till 4500 MHz and we managed it using its simple UI.

The LED AURA software lets you enable or disable the LED lights according to your taste and requirement. With almost every connectivity option, it also hosts USB type C port which is now becoming popular in both smartphones and laptops as it offers versatile connectivity options alongwith great data transfer speed. But we missed the AC WIFI; and also the absence of 10 Gbit Ethernet jack that we could expect from a powerful motherboard like TUF.

To check its day-to-day real world performance, we opened more than 20 tabs in Chrome and Mozilla web browsers. Simultaneously, we operated MS office and some other applications. We were able to switch between apps without any performance issue as well as browse the net. Even while Overclocking, it was steady till 5000 MHz and we did it using its simple UI.

The LED AURA software lets you enable or disable the LED lights which you may like or dislike, so you can do that as per your wish. With almost every connectivity option, it also hosts USB type C port which is now becoming popular in both smartphones and laptop due to versatile connectivity option and great data transfer speed. But we missed AC WIFI, also not a 10 Gbit Ethernet jack that we could expect from a powerful motherboard like TUF.