Which of these Z270 motherboards would you choose. I don't care about benching or pushing my system to it's limit. I want the system to last 3+ years. Intel KabyLake i7-7700k 4.2ghz is fast enough (for me), even if i did overclock it to 5ghz+, it would be hard to notice a difference.  I use my PC for gaming and watching movies/videos. 
 
MSI Z270 GAMING M7 $249.99
Dual Realtek ALC1220 (audio boost 4 Pro)
 
GIGABYTE Aorus GA-Z270X-Gaming 7 $239.99
Creative Sound Core 3D chip Upgradable OP-AMP
 
ASUS ROG Maximus IX Hero Z270 $229.99
ROG SupremeFX S1220  High Definition DAC  
 

Based on your criteria between those 3 ----> MSI
 
My MSI X58 is still running strong, been a solid MB

I'm shocked more people haven't made a comment.

dakon
ASUS ROG Maximus IX Hero Z270
 
My buddy just did a build with this one and loves it (@4.9 with little to no effort).  I have an old z87 hero for my current machine, and it is rock solid.

I keep going back and looking at ASUS ROG Maximus IX Hero Z270.  Just waiting to see more reviews on all three motherboards before i make a choice.
 

thorimmortal
Anything but the gigabyte! Building a new system decided to try the gigabyte, not impressed, I would buy biostar before buying another gigabyte board
It's the little things like the bios refuses to update through qflash had to update though win.
Many other bugs with the included software, I know I shouldn't use bloatware, more problematic than Ai suite ever thought about being.
Killer nic software was chewing up 11 gigs of ram! how that is even possible I can't explain
The bios is very clunky, what good is a mouse pointer if it doesn't work properly.
 
Honestly I'm pulling this turd out and going back to asus, the hero is topping my list at the price point

ASUS Z270 Hero looks like a nice mobo. MSI Z270 M7 has a $20 rebate on newegg right now.
 
 
 
 

ASRock Z270 Extreme 4 would be my pick: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157738
 
I've got one of their Z170 boards and have been very impressed. Best sound quality from onboard sound I have heard. They have 10 Z270 boards to choose from, you should be able to find the features you want with one of them ;)

007vsMagua
What about the MSI Z270 Gaming M3? I use my computer like you and I'm not sure much can be gained by overclocking so what do you think about H270 as a platform? I realize that onboard sound is of importance to you from your other posts but I use a sound card.
 
MSI Z270 Gaming M3  $159.99
MSI H270 Gaming M3  $134.99

Real world performance, i doubt you could tell the difference between $130 mobo vs $200-300 one.  Most of the custom pre build systems use under $180 motherboards. 
 
 

somethingc00l
ASRock Z270 Extreme 4 would be my pick: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157738
 
I've got one of their Z170 boards and have been very impressed. Best sound quality from onboard sound I have heard. They have 10 Z270 boards to choose from, you should be able to find the features you want with one of them ;)

ASRock does make some good motherboards. I probably could find  ASRock motherboard with the features i like.
 
 
All these choices makes it hard to decide. With Z270 being less than a month old, not that many real world reviews out there.
 
 
 

Sajin
I'd give the gigabyte board a try. My gigabyte board has been great.

Thats what I said, I built a gaming 7 a six months ago for my son. no issues or problems I was very impressed with the board, bios and software. The new one seems like they rushed it to market.

I just watched this review by Gamers Nexus about MSI's M.2 Shield being used on all there top MB's. The "Shield" is suppose to help with cooling the NAND chips and prevent throttling, but actually does the opposite according to the review. It's not a deal breaker for me, but I'll not attach mine if I go with MSI. Maybe there is some type of mini cooling solution out there, as those little buggers get hot.

I ended up going with ASUS Z270 HERO for $220 on Amazon (Ship and sold by Amazon). 
 
 
 
 
 

I do like ASUS custom audio software allowing you to set a equalizer for each program. My old $170 sound card software never had features like that.

Dukman

MSim
I'm shocked more people haven't made a comment.

I haven't done any research on the Z270 yet, so Im not sure what's changed or been updated.   But going by my experience of brand reliability... Anything but ASUS.  
 
For me, it would be a toss up between the MSI and the ASUS.   While I have no hands on experience with Gigabyte, I was a bit surprised to see how many reviews there were about their X99 and Z170 boards being unreliable.  
 
 
 

MSI Z270 M7 looks nice. I hear the heat shield on MSI Z270 motherboards for the m.2 drive causes increased SSD temperatures. They claimed it would help reduce temperatures.
 
 
 
 

007vsMagua
I just came across this fresh video review of the MSI Z270 Gaming M7 by Hardware Unboxed. It's a very fair review and does cover some of the heating issues as concerning the M.2 shield and the plastic shroud covering the VRM. An i5-7600K was used at 4.8GHz and that's the CPU I'm interested in. The American Megatrends BIOS looks interesting and is so much different than what I've been using the last six years. Currently listing at $250.00-Newegg I think this board offers a lot of bang for the buck. I need to start seeing some reviews of the EVGA Z270 FTW-K before I decide.

I'm surprised MSI messed up the audio software like that. Hopefully they release a new version of the software to fix the issue. I'd probably still take MSI Z270 M7 over EVGA Z270 FTW-K. I see no reason to support a mfg that uses older audio chip and doesn't offer other audio features like we see from top mobo mfg.
 
 
 
 
 

Asus is a pretty solid choice, have not had an issue with any of their products since I switched to Intel.
 
EVGA has not really put anything out on the motherboard market that is of interest to me... The last board I had from them was a X58 (E758) board and it blew away any competitors board I had dealt with previously. After a while the support from EVGA was lacking. Updating the BIOS was always a pain, you had to use 3rd party software to make it possible to update by USB. The software (EVGA E-LEET) was straight up abandoned and EVGA told users to delete it due to it's complications.
 
I waited a while for user reviews on the X79, thinking I'd give EVGA one more try... Decided against it when customers were reporting the BIOS chip being corrupted or DOA. Took me about 10 years to give MSI another try and I'm glad I did, cause I have not had a single issue with any of their products so far.

RainStryke
Asus is a pretty solid choice, have not had an issue with any of their products since I switched to Intel.
 
EVGA has not really put anything out on the motherboard market that is of interest to me... The last board I had from them was a X58 (E758) board and it blew away any competitors board I had dealt with previously. After a while the support from EVGA was lacking. Updating the BIOS was always a pain, you had to use 3rd party software to make it possible to update by USB. The software (EVGA E-LEET) was straight up abandoned and EVGA told users to delete it due to it's complications.
 
I waited a while for user reviews on the X79, thinking I'd give EVGA one more try... Decided against it when customers were reporting the BIOS chip being corrupted or DOA. Took me about 10 years to give MSI another try and I'm glad I did, cause I have not had a single issue with any of their products so far.

I'm not a hardcore upgrader and my next build will be my third build...coming this summer. Money has always been an issue so I'm always looking for a balance of cost and performance.
 
In my first build I used the MSI P6N SLI Platinum with an Intel Q6600. I did run into some problems when I tried to oc the cpu, but if left alone it's still working fine.
 
The EVGA P55 has been a great board and has allowed me to run my i5-750 at 3.8Ghz and stable in testing. I've kept it at 3.2Ghz to allow for Turbo and the board is still going strong. I do remember having to deal with BIOS updates and fortunately the last one works for me.
 
Two years ago I picked up the MSI GTX 780Ti at Newegg for $330.00. That price may have been a mistake as the sale price was not listed the next day. The card has worked perfect for my needs. I really like how MSI presents itself. They seem to offer high end components like capacitors etc. in their designs. I'm not sure what customer support is like at MSI as I've never had to use them.