Price / Where to Buy:
US – Approx. US$159 – ECS Z170 CLAYMORE
PH – TBA
Intel’s new generation platform has been with us for a while now and with a peculiar launch strategy, the Skylake platform has for the most part filled many market segments with the various SKUs now available. Going back to launch day, there weren’t a lot of motherboards present with name brands betting on their most noteworthy product lines to set the stage for next-generation desktops.
One of the launch models announced was from ECS with their first motherboard for Skylake processors, something we’ve seen at Computex but a bit more naked. We did joke about how its gonna look and right now we will see that. During that time, ECS wasn’t holding back on specs and they were eager to share about their new features and now we have the full motherboard in our test bench and we’re really excited to see what ECS has done with their new series. Read on for our review of the ECS Z170 CLAYMORE motherboard.
Features
- Windows 10 Workable support
- 3-Way multi-graphics solution
- 12 Phase Power Design
- Supports Intel® K Series unlock CPU
- Applied 100% Solid capacitor design to maximize component reliability
- ECS Durathon Technology ensure the stability, reliability and performance of system.
- ESD Protection prevents computers from electrostatic discharge damage to enhance its durability and lifespan
- ECS EZ charger provides a fast way to charge your smart devices, even if the PC is off
- Supports GUI UEFI for tweaking BIOS in Graphical interface within a multi language environment
- ECS MIB X – A friendly interface for overclocking, especially for gamer
- Supports HDMI 2.0 Technology ( resolution up to 3840 x 2160 pixels )
- Microsoft Windows 8.1 Certified
- Intel® 14nm 6th generation Multi-Core CPU support
- Supports DirectX® 12 to enhance graphical performance
- Supports AMD CrossFire™ to expand your system’s graphics capabilities.
- Supports Intel® HD Graphics
- Supports Display Port 1.2 Technology
- ECS Intelligent EZ Utility : eBLU, eDLU, eSF
Intel Skylake CPU
Intel has opted to stagger the launch of the Skylake CPUs with the flagship Core i7-6700K and Core i5-6600K unlocked processors debuting at launch together with the Z170 chipset. Further SKUs were released after launch for the lower end of the product stack.
Intel Skylake CPUs presents a new microarchitecture using the 14nm process seen in Broadwell processors. Intel Skylake CPUs will feature improved efficiency numbers and IPC performance together with a new IGP. As with all launch CPUs, these top-end unlocked processors are aimed at enthusiasts and support multiplier overclocking.
Also in the platform is support for DDR4. The new processors fully supports dual-channel DDR4 memory with the new DDR4 modules supporting higher default memory of 2133MHz at only 1.2v. Some motherboard makers may also opt to use DDR3 still as the processor still retain support for that.
The Intel Z170 Chipset
Accompanying the Intel Skylake 6th-gen processors is the new 100-series chipset, codenamed Sunrise Point. As the primary consumer chipset for the 6th-generation Intel Core processors, the 100-series chipset is available in various chipset series from the mainstream H110, H170 and Z170 and the business-class B150, Q150 and Q170. Intel has decided to stagger the release of their Skylake processors which made the release of the other chipset only happen recently. While it’d take an entire post to describe the finer details on the difference of each chipset, to sum it up really quick the chipsets differ in features: with the Z170 offering the most in terms of expansion and support as well as PCI-e lanes with lower model chipsets reducing on what’s offering the business-class ones expanding to include Small Business Basics and Small Business Advantage.
For the most part of what we’re reviewing we’ll take a look at the Z170 chipset, the top-end chipset for desktop and offers the most features and support for multiplier overclocking.
One of the primary changes from Z97 to Z170 is support for a newsocket, the LGA 1151. LGA 1151 supports Intel Skylake CPUs and is not compatible with LGA 1150 processors and vice versa. Mounting holes for the 115x range have remained the same though so your old LGA 1156/1155/1150 will still be compatible with the new LGA 1151 motherboards.
Support for DDR4 memory is also one of the changes that comes with the new chipset. Connectivity between CPU and chipset also utilizes DMI 3.0 allowing a full 20 PCI-e 3.0 lanes which is up to the motherboard maker on how they utilize it.
Closer Look – ECS Z170 CLAYMORE
Getting back to its Golden Series roots, the ECS Z170 CLAYMORE is packed in a gold box with minimal styling. Details are on the back with the motherboard well packed inside for protection during shipping. Inside the package though is a humble bundle of essential motherboard inclusions like SATA cables, manuals and installation disc.
A closer look at the motherboard, we get to see what a real work of art this board is: its one the cleanest motherboard we’ve seen and the PCB quality is just superb. The matte PCB is simply well-crafted and the gold trims really work well to give this board a professional feel without the gaudy bright colors of previous GANK models. The heatsink design also complement the board with simple black heatsinks adding to the overall tough feel of the board.
One thing to note about this board is the use of all x16 length PCI-e slots but it lacks SLI support. There’s really not much in terms of extras in this board, onboard buttons are present and there’s an M.2 slot as well. Other than that, the lack of a Type-C USB3.1 connector is also worth mentioning.
Performance Testing
Test Setup
Processor: Intel Core i7 6700K
Motherboard: ECS Z170 CLAYMORE
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000
Storage: Kingston HyperX FURY 240GB
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 1000w
Cooling: Custom loop (XSPC Raystorm block, EK DCP 4.0, BlackIce Stealth GT 360 rad)
Monitor: LG 42UB820T UltraHD TV
VGA: GIGABYTE GTX 980 Ti GAMING G1
Performance Testing – Synthetic
Cinebench R15, Cinebench R11.5
Maxon offers a nice benchmark tool called Cinebench which really stresses your entire system to render a very complex scene. The output score is completely unique to Cinebench but allows us to have a rough idea of how the CPU works with 3D rendering tasks. We use both the latest version as well as the older release.
wPrime, SuperPI 32M
wPrime is a multi-threaded benchmarking application designed to measure the raw computational power of a CPU. It can be configured to run on a custom number of threads to accomodate multi-core CPUs.
SuperPI is another benchmarking tool that utilizes the pure computational power of a CPU. This test however is purely single-threaded and shows us the performance of a single core which gives us a good picture of how a processor performs on similar tasks.
3DMark 06, 3DMark Vantage
3D Mark06 is a benchmarking software designed to measure the performance of a system in DirectX9 applications. The test has long been updated with newer version of the software for more modern use but the CPU test is still relevant and still gives us a good image of system performance by loading the CPU with logic, path-finding and physics computation tasks.
3DMark Vantage is the successor to 3DMark 06 and is targeted for DirectX10 compliant devices. Similar to our 3DMark 06 test, we only take the CPU scores using the Performance preset.
Performance Testing – Real World
Video Conversion, Audio Encoding
We use a 30-minute 350MB 720p MP4 video and convert it to standard iOS iPhone MP4 format using Xilisoft Video Converter for pure processor conversion. For audio, we convert a 73-minute album (D-Coy – Black Katipunero) into MP3 LAME 160Kbps CBR with dbPowerAmp Batch converter and note the time it takes to rip the disc.
Compression, Image Resizing
We use WinRAR on default settings to compress 3340 files of varying types including MP3s, various images and documents for a total of 3.3GB of data. We resize 3,246 varying images of different formatsand sizes (a total of 883MB) to our standard 1200×900 resolution and note the time it takes to finish up the batch job.
Performance Testing – 3D Benchmarks
3DMark 11, 3DMark Fire Strike
3DMark 11 is the most recent iteration (not counting the version for the upcoming Windows 8) of the popular benchmarking software from Futuremark. For this test we run the Performance preset of the benchmark which comes with the free version of 3DMark 11 which should present a more reproducible scenario for a lot of people.
The latest iteration of the most widely-used benchmarking application in the world gets a reboot of sorts with the latest version just going by the name of 3DMark. This version includes the Fire Strike benchmark which features tons of new implementations to put modern systems through their paces.
Overclocking
ECS introduces a new BIOS interface to their UEFI BIOS which should intently easily allowing overclocking. We tried this feature prior to going manual but we did notice one thing, our board was constantly throttling regardless which settings we used in the UEFI BIOS.
While we won’t always go by figures in the BIOS especially voltage, its a good hint on where we at in most cases. In this instance, the board is reporting 1.41v VCORE with the onboard sensor reporting a +73 figure which is really ambiguous without the measurement.
Loading up the system, stock voltage was set around 1.4v by default even with the latest BIOS update and the system does alright when loaded with AIDA with these out-of-box figures. The problem lies when we use the auto-overclocking option as well as any form of overclock here as the system refuses to have its voltage changed and will revert to 1.46v or higher when the multiplier is changed. A maximum OC of 4.4Ghz is manageable but temps are really concerning as you’ll see later.
We’re really not too happy with the results here as we were unable to achieve any form of overclock that yielded good thermals. We’ll try to communicate the issue with ECS and in the meantime, we’ll forego the overclocking results as shown in our performance charts. For the overall overclocking experience, we just didn’t the results we wanted but controls are still similar to the previous releases from ECS and allows controls for voltage and multiplier OC. How far we can take the far is something we need to tackle another day.
Power & Temperatures
We check to see how motherboard makers tune their default BIOS settings and see how it impacts temperatures and power consumption. The system is left to idle for 30 minutes before readings are taken and load data is taken 30 minutes while AIDA64 stress test is running. Power readings are taken for the entire system from the socket. Power draw for the entire system is captured for this test via an outlet wattmeter and temperatures are recorded via Intel Extreme Tuning app.
As mentioned in the section before, this motherboard junks a lot of voltage on stock, 1.38v to 1.42v. We’ve updated the BIOS in hopes that ECS has updated this but no improvement. That said, at 92*C on water, this is looking really bad and if not for the higher-specced GB SOC FORCE which also uses higher stock voltage, it’d be the ECS sitting in that last spot. Power draw however looks alright despite its higher core voltage given the board doesn’t really have much to power on-board.
Conclusion
Skylake has been a very weird launch but despite of that, it is still a new platform and will be the one we will have going forward to 2016. As we’ve seen throughout the last generations, motherboard technology has reached the point where all brands can compete evenly in terms of performance and they all bring-out the best of their respective processors. What has been and always be the contention point for components is their feature set, quality and aesthetic. Let’s break it down for the GIGABYTE Z170X SOC FORCE:
Performance. Out of box performance is decent but there are some hitches when temps go out of control. If you’re using good cooling, you’re in the clear but those who are just starting and are using lower-end cooling you’re a bit on the hairy side as the higher stock voltage can send your temps hovering in the high-80s and 90s. Overclocking is achievable but without decent voltage control, it was really hard to tweak this to make it work.
Build Quality. The board has excellent build quality and looks really clean. The quality of the build is really tangible when holding it and you can see ECS has really taken their game up in terms of production on this board.
Functionality. We’d like to point out that again, this board does not support SLI. Despite the number of x16 slots on it, you’re stuck with AMD Crossfire. That being said, being the budget board that the Z170-CLAYMORE is, its all well and good and we can see ECS hopefully rolling out a revision sometime in the future or possibly a new product. For now, the Z170-CLAYMORE provides support for only AMD Crossfire but aside from that, it functions well as a basic gaming motherboard with all the essentials you need.
Bundle. Simple bundle.
Value. At $159, this is easily one of the most affordable top-end release motherboards out right now and despite its quirks which can be resolved later there’s really a lot of options to hopefully make the best out of this motherboard.
Price / Where to Buy:
US – Approx. US$159 – ECS Z170 CLAYMORE
PH – TBA
The ECS Z170 CLAYMORE is a good board marred by a poor BIOS with even poorer settings. That said, out of the box this board can serve anyone well provided they won’t be overclocking and have decent cooling like an AIO loop. At $159, its a nice-looking motherboard and ECS could surely dedicate some time in resolving its bugs.
ECS backs the Z170 CLAYMORE with a 3-year warranty.