ASUS Z270 Workstation Review

Introduction

We’ve often mentioned how the Intel Z270 chipset really comes with so much by default that it is difficult for any manufacturer to produce a bad one. That does, however, also mean that there isn’t much room to stretch a premium model above the rest, and premium models are the ones that whet all our appetites.

The ASUS Workstation series started life as something which lived up to that moniker, being designed largely for enterprise solutions rather than the home gamer. But today’s review, the ASUS Z270 Workstation, manages to come with enough enthusiast features to differentiate itself from the mid-range options, whilst also proving very attractive to power users for whom no amount of performance is enough.

So what’s new?

Technical Specifications

Whilst the ASUS Workstation might not win the ‘obviously beautiful’ world championships, we think it comes pretty close where the features are concerned. Everything you would expect to find on a premium Z270 motherboard is here. It has bags of storage bandwidth thanks to USB 3.1, two U.2 32Gb/s connectors or the dual M.2 32Gb/s connections. Even if you are only using regular SATA storage then six SATA3 ports have you covered. At the other end of the connection market the WS has two Gigabit LAN ports, so you can run a separate network as well as the all important internet input, without which all our lives would be meaningless.

Although the Workstation title might not hint at any particular gaming prowess, the inclusion of a bevy of PLX chips mean that the WS supports Quad GPUs for ludicrously high frame rates. But enough of a side on, let’s take a look at it in the flesh.