If the early information is to be believed, the Kaby Lake-ready platform primarily focuses its efforts on largely minor improvements, like additional HSIO lanes to support a burgeoning PCI-e-enabled SSD market. Z270 will move from Z170’s 26 HSIO (High-Speed I/O) lanes to 30 HSIO lanes, providing an additional 4 lanes for M.2 and PCI-e AICs (add-in cards). H270, meanwhile, will move from H170’s 22 lanes up to parity with the Z-series platform, also hosting 30 HSIO lanes. The additional lanes fall into the category of “general purpose” PCI-e lanes, resulting in the following configuration:

It’s not yet time to pen a full, in-depth comparison between Intel’s forthcoming Kaby Lake chipsets, including Z270, H270, and whatever may become of the lower-end H- and B- lines. There’s still data we’re waiting on, and won’t have access to for a little while yet. Still, some preliminary Z270 & H270 chipset specs have been reported by Benchlife , including information on PCI-e lane count and HSIO lanes. This coverage follows the same format as our Z170 vs. H170, H110, B150, & Q150 differences article .

Intel Z270, H270, Z170, & H170 Chipset Differences

Z270 Z170 H270 H170 B150 H110 HSIO Lanes 30 26 30 22 18 14 Chipset PCI-e Lanes x24 3.0 x20 3.0 x20 3.0 x16 3.0 x10 3.0 x6 2.0 PCI-e 3.0 Config 1 x16

2 x8

1 x8 + 2x4 1 x16

2 x8

1 x8 + 2x4 1 x16 1 x16 1 x16 1 x16 CPU Overclocking Yes Yes No No No No Memory Channels 2 2 2 2 2 2 DIMMs per Channel 2 2 2 2 2 1 Native SATA III Ports 6 6 6 6 6 4 Max USB Ports 14 14 14 14 12 10 Max USB3.0 Ports 10 10 8 8 6 4 Intel SRT Yes Yes Yes Yes No No RAID 0/1/5/10 Yes Yes Yes Yes No Independent Displays (IGP) 3 3 3 2 3 2

Note well that this does not necessarily indicate expanded multi-GPU support. We’re talking about chipset HSIO lanes, here, not PCI-e lanes that are peeled off the processor itself. NVidia devices minimally require 8 lanes for multi-GPU configurations, and if Kaby Lake’s chipsets remain the same as Skylake, those HSIO lanes can generally be assigned only in clusters of 4 lanes per connected device. Those lanes could still be diverted to PCI-e slots, but you wouldn’t get more than additional x4 slots on a board.

Regardless, the expanded HSIO support and additional 4x general purpose PCI-e lanes does make for a promising future that moves ever away from the limited SATA interface. SATA is choking our SSDs with its throughput limitations, something that NVMe and PCI-e readily resolve.

To reiterate: H270 also sees this expansionist HSIO behavior, moving the platform further into the realm of acceptance for non-overclocking system builds. The Z-series chipset will remain fully unlocked in BCLK and multiplier OC functions, H-series will remain at least partially locked, but the differences will now be almost entirely consigned to overclocking and CPU PCI-e availability (reported 1x 16 on H-series). Even Intel’s Optane will be supported on the H270, another move reinforcing future non-Z platform choices for enthusiast builds.

Aside from these differences, Z270 retains support three total M.2 x4 PCI-e storage devices, with H270 supporting two total M.2 x4 PCI-e storage devices. That many slots would take up a lot of real-estate on the board, obviously, but we may soon see a future where space is freed-up from waning interest in SATA.

Other than this, the chipsets look largely similar at this point. This is still an early comparison. We’ll revisit as the B200 series chipsets are announced.

Editorial: Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke

Video: Andrew “ColossalCake” Coleman