With the ROG STRIX Z270G Gaming, ASUS has a well equipped micro-ATX motherboard in its portfolio, which comes with a bunch of interesting features. There are for example two M.2 Gen 3 x4 slots and an internal USB 3.1 connector. Apart from that ASUS refined the design of their STRIX Gaming series motherboards, removing all the orange accents that we’ve seen on X99 STRIX Gaming products.
The ROG STRIX Z270G Gaming is an mATX form-factor motherboard. As with all other STRIX Gaming series motherboards this microATX model comes with the AURA feature, allowing you to change the illumination of the board from within Windows. In the case of expansion slots there are two full-sized and metal-strengthened PCIe slot as well as two M.2 slots. Since there is not much space available on microATX motherboards, ASUS has placed the M.2 slots in two different positions. The first drive can be mounted at the bottom, while the slot can be found on the back-side of the PCB. Having a quick look at the SATA connectors we find six of them supporting SATA-III.
Like other ROG STRIX motherboards the heat sinks are kept in dark silver color and the RGB backlight creates a nice ambience. Looking for additional features we find USB 3.1 ports internally and externally, a decent power design and a good mix of connectors at the I/O panel. There is a Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac module supporting Bluetooth v4.1.
At the moment this is the only Z270 microATX motherboard available from ASUS. So far there aren’t any rumors on a possible Maximus IX Gene, which would have actually been the microATX motherboard we would have expected. As usual we’re going to have an in-depth look at this board on the following pages.