The New Kaby Lake Z270 Test Bench Gets Built – 5GHz

Every year or so, we try to upgrade our hardware to stay current with tech trends and bumping our newest test bench up to the new Kaby Lake design was no different.  With Intel’ newest Optane Technology knocking at the door, the Z270 was a must.  If you are wondering whether the boot to Z270 is worth the jump from Z170, it is really a matter of your specific needs as the only real difference is the inclusion of 4 additional PCIe 3.0 lanes and the compatibility with Optane. So… this is what had arrived at our offices over the past few weeks…

And this is what my office looks like on a good day… I love shots like this as the only way to built a PC is on a sunny weekend day with total chaos as everything gets thrown around the room.

And the reward is…  I have to concede that this was the most straight forward build that I have ever completed.  Undoubtedly, something always seems to challenge me in my builds and, but for a small issue with initial boot times with this Z270 build, everything went very smoothly.

Before we jump into things, a huge thank you must go out to Corsair, PNY and  Kingston, all of who may this venture possible.  This Z270 test Bench is right now running with the CPU at 4.5GHZ, has 16GB of DDR4 memory running at 3000MHz, and we had absolutely no problem whatsoever bumping it to 5GHz and passing our first pass of Intel Xtreme Tuning utility…. although she did run a tad warm.

It is actually a bit amusing that we fit our most powerful system yet into the Corsair Crystal 460x Compact Mid-Tower Chassis.  Quite frankly, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to take advantage of a full tempered glass front and side view with this case.