Should I upgrade from a z170 to a z270 with my current setup? Also whilst it's Cyber Monday.

[Vezium]

I'm currently running a setup with the following internals:

- ASUS Z170-A Motherboard
- i7 7700k
- EVGA 1080Ti
- 165hz GSYNC 1ms 2k ASUS ROG PG278QR
- 16GB Ballistix sport 2400mhz RAM
- 2 x 500GB Samsung EVO 850 SSD
- 1 x 750GB HDD

For gaming, I get high FPS rates as you'd expect, averaging between 100-130ish in D2. Wondering if I could boost this number or how much it would boost if I upgraded my board to a Z270 (would it be worth it?). There's currently an MSI one on sale for £54.98 down from £127.93 on Amazon.

 

[Darkbreeze]

No, you should not. There is no point, at all, in going from Z170 to Z270 unless you HAVE to replace something anyhow. The performance difference is negligible.

Either move up to Coffee lake refresh, or stay put for now. That would be my advice. There aren't even any features on Z270 worth having over Z170 aside from RGB headers on some boards. Pointless upgrade. Personally, I'd wait to see what Zen2 brings or see what the next gen from Intel has to offer UNLESS you are forced to buy something before than due to hardware failure.

 

[Vezium]

I've found that the Z270 boards give an extra 4 PCI Lanes giving the cpu more bandwidth. Would this not be noticeable?

In addition, I've heard the overclocking capability will be better too. I tried to overclock today and even on a 6% clock boost, my system crashes under load. Do you think I could get away with such a boost with a motherboard that supports the Kaby family a little better?

 

[Darkbreeze]

There are no major differences to the VRM configurations between Z170 and Z270 unless you are comparing a lower end board to a higher tiered model.

As far as the PCI lanes are concerned, that would only benefit you if you were in need of running many SATA, eSATA or PCI slot devices and were running out of lanes, such as with an M.2 drive or dual graphics cards. Maybe a few other scenarios, but overall, unless you KNOW you are lacking in PCI lanes due to a large number of storage devices, an NVME drive sucking up lanes or an SLI/Crossfire configuration, it wouldn't make any difference.