New Biostar Hi-Fi H170Z3 Motherboard Fits Both DDR3L & DDR4

In what Biostar claims to be an industry first, the company’s latest motherboard supports both DDR3L and DDR4 RAM for 6th Gen Intel CPUs.

The Hi-Fi H170Z3 micro-ATX motherboard hosts two DDR3L slots and two DDR4 slots, capable of 1866MHz/16GB & 2133MHz/32GB, respectively. Keep in mind that you will only be able to effectively use two slots simultaneously, so this does limit growth options.

The Skylake motherboard uses the H170 chipset – relatively untested thus far – which has high-speed IO (HSIO) lanes available to the motherboard manufacturer for various IO allocation. In the case of Biostar, the motherboard is capable of hosting 4x SATA III, 1x SATA Express, 1x M.2 Key M, 1x PCI-e 3.0 x16, 1x PCI-e 3.0 x1, 2x PCI, GbE, and 4x USB3.0 + USB3.0 header (with some USB2.0 thrown in).

The H170 chipset is a lesser form of the Z170, with a greater focus on SMB (small business) and biz-client sales. H170 limits some BIOS overclocking options, but is available for cheaper than its Z170 variant.

We are not sure of the price for Biostar’s DDR3 & DDR4 motherboard yet, but are attempting to retrieve a sample for review. We’re curious whether the DDR3L/DDR4 support will be more of a novelty than a functional advantage, given potential memory restrictions and the two-slot limitation. This is something that’ll be up for testing.

Learn more about the board here: http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=812#ov

- Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke.