Biostar shows its first Kaby Lake motherboard

Biostar unveiled its first motherboard for Kaby Lake processors at CES. The Racing Z270GT9 features the Z270 chipset and six PCI-e slots. Other features include a 10-gigabit LAN port and support for Quick Charge 2.0 in a USB port.

The motherboard is ATX format and has four DDR4 RAM slots, six PCI-E x16 3.0 slots, six SATA-600 connectors, two USB 2.0 headers, a USB 3.0 header, and a Thunderbolt 3 header. Furthermore, there are two u.2 slots and an m.2 connector. Extra buttons are provided on the motherboard, with which it can be started and reset, among other things, without a switch being connected to the appropriate pins.

The row of inputs and outputs on the back features a PS/2 port, two USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, one of which uses a USB-C connector, four USB 3.0 ports, a DisplayPort 1.3 connector, a HDMI 2.0 connection, an HDMI 1.4b connection, five analog audio connectors for 7.1 audio, a Toslink connection and two Ethernet connections, one of which supports speeds of up to 10Gbit/s.

Additional features of the motherboard include support for Quick Charge 2.0 to quickly charge a phone and a heat shield for an m.2 SSD. There is also built-in RGB lighting and LED strips can be connected to the motherboard, which can be controlled with Biostar software. The motherboard has two biochips, so that in the event of a failed bios update, you can fall back on the bios in the backup chip.

Biostar claims that the audio hardware is shielded from the rest of the motherboard in such a way that no noise can occur. There is also a built-in amplifier to drive high-impedance headphones.