Layout

A quick look at this board reveals a black and green color scheme. It's actually nice to see a vendor taking on black and green with their motherboards. There have been many enthusiasts waiting for a board featuring these colors. Apart from that the C7Z170-OCE from Supermicro can be combined nicely with high-end graphics cards from NVIDIA, since they feature a green illuminated logo. Overall this is a good looking motherboard and the only thing that just doesn't fit into the big picture is the red ball in the Supermicro logo which is on the shroud covering the I/O ports as well as the red backlight, illuminating the audio divide. The layout has been very well thought. To mention our two usual points: there are angled SATA ports, which means you can install extra long graphics cards without having them collide with SATA cables. Apart from that there is plenty of space around the CPU socket, so you can install even today's largest CPU cooler.

The Supermicro C7Z170-OCE comes with a digital 6+2+1+1 phase power design. The CPU receives six full phases, the iGPU can rely on two full phases and VCCSA as well as VCCIO receive stable current supply from one phase each. Regarding the VCCIO it's worth noticing, that a smaller voltage converter is being used. On this board Supermicro uses Vitec 59PR72151 inductors, which feature a saturation current of 66A and a maximum operating temperature of 125°C. There is no other vendor today, which is using higher quality inductors on their consumer motherboards. Apart from that Supermicro doesn't do any phase splitting, which means every single phase is controlled by the main PWM chips directly. These come from International Rectifier and go by the name IR3556M and they are specified for 50A.
A look at the memory VRM reveals that it's based on componets from Infineon. While there are PX3143HDM PWMs from Primarion a power stage with writing DA21232 is also present. Furthermore there is a TPS51362 power converter from Texas Instruments, capable of withstanding 10A current.

There is a total of four DIMM-slots on the C7Z170-OCE and the board officially supports DDR4-3200. There is enough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you wont encounter compatibility problems with big coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders. Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 2.0.

On the C7Z170-OCE the southbridge is being cooled by a passive cooling block. A closer look at the VRM area shows there are two additional heatsinks. All heatsinks on this board are rather compact. Apparently this means there is a lot of space around the CPU socket, which makes installing hardware a bit more comfortable and there won't be any compatibility issues.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 14 - UC Bench
Page 3 - Layout	Page 15 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 4 - Connectors and I/O	Page 16 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 5 - BIOS	Page 17 - Cinebench
Page 6 - Test setup	Page 18 - Tomb Raider
Page 7 - Preview / Gallery	Page 19 - Metro Last Light
Page 8 - 3D Mark	Page 20 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 9 - 3D Mark	Page 21 - Power Consumption
Page 10 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 22 - Performance Rating
Page 11 - PC Mark 8	Page 23 - Price Comparison
Page 12 - SiSoft Sandra 1	Page 24 - Conclusion