Z270-K or Z270-P

[Gorgonite]

I am looking to upgrade to the i5-7600K cpu.
I have 2 questions regarding the motherboards in the title:
Can anyone simply tell me what are the differences between these two motherboards?
Are these motherboards compatible with the i5-7600K?

I would appreciate some help :)

[Martin Harris]

I think Z270-K Is overclockable, and Z270-P Isn't? Im not sure

I'd recommend this if possiable : https://pcpartpicker.com/product/7VZ2FT/asus-prime-z270-a-atx-lga1151-motherboard-prime-z270-a, Im sure thats overclockable for your unlocked cpu.

[tacoshy]

yes both are compatible as all Z270 MoBo are all So.1151 which the 7600K uses too. The prefix of the mosterboard depends between the different manufacturer and which features they offering. So If you would tell which MoBo you want exactly we can tell you the exact difference.

[Gorgonite]

Here is the Z270-P
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-1151-PRIME-Z270-P-Motherboard/dp/B01N1WIKVS/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Next to it on the list of other motherboards is the Z270-K.
I checked the descriptions but I still don't understand the differences between them.

Someone in the reviews said they bought the Z270-P for their i5-7600K and it is overclockable.
I don't know if he is right about that.

Also sorry for replying late.

[Big Boom Boom]

Difference
http://ddr4motherboard.com/compare/ASUS-PRIME-Z270-K-vs-ASUS-PRIME-Z270-P

K is more expensive as it has more feature. Both are not going to be very good overclockable, there's a discernable lack of robust VRM even though it has 7 power phase which is the min I would suggest for doing decent Overclocking. It has 2 chasis fan header, 1 cpu fan header and 1 water pump header which is the bare minimum I would suggest.

For a light overclockable this is teeming with features, has at least 2 x M2 drive. If you do want to do some medium overclocking though, I would suggest at least a Gigabyte Gaming K3 or Prime A. Those has more robust VRM and more fan/hybrid fan headers. I personally went with the G Gaming K3, it's cheapest I would go for medium overclocking. Tons of thermal sensors, 5 hybrid fan header, more VRM at the cost of cutting back 2nd M2 drive.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

The letters/number/etc... after Z### doesn't matter as they're used to identify which model from the company.

Z270 is for overclocking CPU's that has K at the end of the CPU like the i5 7600k.

To be clear both motherboards will support the following list.

ASUS PRIME Z270-K
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/PRIME-Z270-K/HelpDesk_CPU/

ASUS PRIME Z270-P
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/PRIME-Z270-P/HelpDesk_CPU/

[Big Boom Boom]

Well the models do matter. For hardcore overclocking I would suggest the expensive ASUS ROG or Gigabyte Gaming 7->9. For ASUS, Prime is budget, Strix is mid tier and ROG is high end.

[Gorgonite]

The Strix, ASUS ROG and Gigabyte Gaming 7 are out of my budget. I need to buy 16GB of DDR4 RAM and the i5-7600k, then later maybe an MSI 1060 3GB GPU. Which in total is very expensive for me. So the motherboard needs to be budget level.
I should mention that I am only running at 1080p resolution on a single monitor. So keeping that in mind, for the games I play I only need to do light overclocking if any.

I was originally considering getting the Asus Z170-P but because I want to do some light overclocking I started to look at the Z270 range. The price difference between the Z170-P and Z270-P is currently about £8 so it would probably be silly to buy the Z170-P.

I checked http://ddr4motherboard.com/compare/ASUS-PRIME-Z270-K-vs-ASUS-PRIME-Z270-P
and they seem very similar. I don't really know what to look for here so could you tell me what you think are the key features the Z270-K has and the Z270-P does not? Is the VRM the same on both?

I could afford to get the Gigabyte Gaming K3 or Prime A but if I am only looking to do light overclocking, is it worth it? I already have fan splitter cables so more fan headers isn't necessary. Also I don't have an M2 ssd so this feature is not important to me.

[⛧EyMi Mayhem⛧]

tbh.. a bit "light overclocking" isn't worth and not rly worth to aim for z270 with intel k.
And looks so u r on budget too. In that case, go with intel non-k and a decent b250 board...

[Gorgonite]

Originally posted by ⚝EyMi Mayhem⚝:

tbh.. a bit "light overclocking" isn't worth and not rly worth to aim for z270 with intel k.
And looks so u r on budget too. In that case, go with intel non-k and a decent b250 board...

Well I am new to overclocking and I want to try it out but not push the hardware too much.
But what intel non-k cpu would you suggest that has around the same performance of the i5-7600k?

[pasa]

Most of the board is identical, the K has 2 PCI slots instead of PCIe, one of the M2 slots is bigger, 2 extra SATA 6G, and extra USB. Safe bet all of that irrelevant for you.

[Gorgonite]

Originally posted by pasa:

Most of the board is identical, the K has 2 PCI slots instead of PCIe, one of the M2 slots is bigger, 2 extra SATA 6G, and extra USB. Safe bet all of that irrelevant for you.

Aha, this is what I was looking for. Yeah your safe bet is correct.

This makes me think the Z270-P could be the right choice. Or I could spend a little extra and get a Gigabyte Gaming K3 or Prime A and then I would have the option to further overclock if needed in the future. I'll have to think on it.

[Big Boom Boom]

I would suggest either Gaming K3 or Prime A, those can handle 5.0 Ghz Kaby Lake easily. They are not a whole lot more expensive either. It's very easy to spot how much a motherboard can handle overclocking by just looking around the CPU socket area, how many chokes are there and how big the heatsinks are. More chokes = more power phase, bigger heatsink = robust VRM cooling.