I remember reviewing the ASUS Z170 PRO GAMING, a board that is priced high but offers nothing special, suffice to say the board didn’t garner my favor.
Moving forward to 13 months since then, we now have the ASUS Z170 PRO GAMING/AURA – does it share the same fate?
One thing I’m absolutely glad of is that the Pro Gaming/Aura model looks totally different from the Pro Gaming model. The Pro Gaming model is like an ROG model wannabe, it’s in red and black color but you know (especially if you are an ROG board user) that the color is off and it doesn’t feel right.
Moving forward the to the Pro Gaming / Aura, it is distinctly different, colored in a grey-black-white.
The heatsinks look familiar too, just that they’re not red.
Nothing out of the ordinary here.
Even the design on the heatsink here looks similar to the Pro Gaming released a year ago but I think it looks much better now, the key difference is that this model now does not come with SATA Express port.
Over here we see the PCI-E slots, the Z170 Pro Gaming/Aura supports both SLI and CFX configuration. One thing I’m glad that it doesn’t come with that ugly red colored LED anymore, after all it’s an AURA model.
The RGB is exactly as the one seen here.
Here are the I/O ports.
1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port(s)
1 x DVI
1 x D-Sub
1 x DisplayPort
1 x HDMI
1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
1 x USB 3.1 (red)Type-A
1 x USB 3.1 Type-C
4 x USB 3.0
2 x USB 2.0
1 x Optical S/PDIF out
5 x Audio jack(s)
More details at the official product page.
User Experience
The board works just as any other Z170, what’s great is that ASUS comes with the best UEFI interface and what you see on high-end boards, you see it here as well. The only difference is that higher-end models like those from the ROG Maximus models come with more fine-tuning details and overall better build components.
The Verdict
The ASUS Z170 PRO GAMING/AURA Motherboard retails at RM 820, I think that’s a good price for a board that comes with great UEFI interface, reasonably good looking and best of all it comes with great looking RGB lights. Believe it or not, a year ago the lack-luster Z170 Pro Gaming entered the market at around RM 859 which is ridiculously high considering it didn’t have RGB lighting.
