Supermicro Quietly Launches the C7Z170-OCE: Multi-GPU focused with PLX8747 for $300
 

One of the biggest changes to the motherboard scene since the release of Skylake is the distinct lack of motherboards designed to cater for more than two PCIe cards using CPU-based lanes. Back in the era of the Z77 chipset, I gathered four motherboards that had the PLX8747 PCIe switch installed, allowing for >2 GPUs, and we really went to town on the detail and benchmarking. But with Z170, the use of the this chip has severely diminished for two reasons. Firstly, GPUs are getting powerful enough to drive 1440p gaming by themselves fairly easily, and secondly, Avago bought PEX, the company that makes these switches, and the price for them essentially doubled overnight. As a result, only a few motherboards for Z170 will have them, such as the Z170-Gaming G1 we reviewed at the end of last year, because of the consumer price concerns and the market to which they are aimed. The GIGABYTE model we reviewed was $500, and featured all the bells and whistles such as Thunderbolt 3 – the Supermicro motherboard announced last week with this PLX chip is the C7Z170-OCE but slides in at $300.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9967/s...lx8747-for-300