Biostar's Hi-Fi Z170Z5 Offers Oddly Midrange Audio

Biostar announced a new motherboard based on the Z170 chipset, the Hi-Fi Z170Z5, and its audio capabilities are oddly limited.

Although this board is in Biostar's Hi-Fi series, it features only a mid-range audio codec with rather limited audio connectivity options. Biostar enclosed the Realtek ALC892 inside of a protective shell and placed it on a segmented piece of the motherboard to try to reduce noise from other components. Biostar also placed a series of four higher-quality capacitors on the board for use with the ALC892, and this, combined with the noise reduction, should offer reasonably clear audio, but it is still a mid-range solution and won't be able to achieve the SNR or clarity of other commonly used codecs.

Surprisingly, Biostar opted to place just three 3.5 mm connections on the board (mic, L/R Audio, Line-In), limiting speaker configurations to either 2.1 (Left, Right + Base) or 4.0 (Front left, front right, rear left, rear right, no subwoofer) setups. This is rather odd, as the ALC892 is fully capable of supporting a 7.1 surround sound configuration. Although many users today will want to use HDMI audio, or use a dedicated sound card if they have a surround sound system, it is rather peculiar to see a product branded as Hi-Fi with such limited audio features.

Another interesting aspect of the Biostar Z170Z5 is the RAM support. Unlike most Skylake motherboards that only support either DDR3 or DDR4, Biostar installed two DIMM slots for each standard. This doesn't allow you to use DDR3 and DDR4 in conjunction with each other, but it does make the board more versatile, and it gives users the option of relying on DDR3 for a time, and then later upgrading to DDR4. Users should remember, however, that Skylake's RAM support is limited to DDR3L at 1.35 V.

Outside of these aspects, the Z170Z5 is a fairly typical Z170 motherboard. It contains two PCI-E x16 slots, a single PCI-E x1 connection, and three legacy PCI ports. Thanks to the Z170 chipset, the motherboard is capable of supporting two graphics cards in an x8 + x8 multi-GPU configuration.

The Z1700Z5 contains a total of four SATA 3.0 ports, as well as an additional two SATA 3.0 ports configured to be used as a Sata Express connection. The board also has an Intel i219V gigabit Ethernet chipset.

There is currently no word yet as to when the board will be available, but it is priced at $129.

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Michael Justin Allen Sexton (or MJ) is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware. As a tech enthusiast, MJ enjoys studying and writing about all areas of tech, but specializes in the study of chipsets and microprocessors. In his personal life, MJ spends most of his time gaming, practicing martial arts, studying history, and tinkering with electronics.

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