Analyzing Z370 for Intel's 8th Generation Coffee Lake: A Quick Look at 50+ Motherboards
by Ian Cutress, Anton Shilov, Joe Shields & Gavin Bonshor on October 20, 2017 2:00 PM ESTGIGABYTE Z370 Gaming 5
The next board from GIGABYTE is the Z370 AORUS Gaming 5. The Gaming 5 sits just below the Gaming 7 in the product stack with a few different features as well as some aesthetic changes. A cursory look at the board and for the most part it looks like the Gaming 7 but with a reduction in some of the features.
The Gaming 5 keeps the black PCB and the AORUS falcon stenciled across the bottom but the stencil appears to be shifted a bit lower on the board, ending at the top PCIe x1 slot. RGB LEDs populate the same locations as on the Ultra Gaming and add more to the I/O shroud and the VRM heatsink. Both the VRM heatsink and shroud have silver colored design elements and a slightly different shape to some of the other GIGABYTE models. The PCH heatsink has an angular aesthetic as well as additional RGB LEDs. The Gaming 5 also has two RGB LED headers (both RGBW headers) all controlled by the RGB Fusion Software.
The board has four reinforced memory slots supporting dual-channel DDR4 with capacity up to 64GB and speeds of DDR4-4133+. For the PCIe slots, there are two full-length reinforced slots at x16 and x8 from the CPU, and the third, non-reinforced full-length x4 slot at the bottom from the chipset. The PCIe x1 slots are also in the same locations as the Gaming 7, one above each of the full-length PCIe slots.
SATA for the Gaming 5 involves six ports supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. The Gaming 5 places all six together and oriented the same way on the board. The board has three M.2 slots (1x 110mm, 2x 80mm), however, none have a heatsink as the flagship Gaming 7 did. For fan connectivity, there are a total of six on the board; two up top by the CPU, three on the bottom, and another just above the top PCIe x1 slot. The audio codec is the same Realtek ALC1220 as the Gaming 7, but we are unable to tell if it has EMI shielded from the images. There is still a single Intel I219-V NIC, but the Gaming 5 adds integrated WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities. The 5-pin Thunderbolt 3 header moves down to the bottom right-hand corner of the board, just above the front panel headers.
USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) support is handled by the ASMedia 3142 controller and provides a Type-C port and Type-A port on the back panel IO. The chipset provides an additional six USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports with four on the back panel and two more available through an internal USB header. There is also USB 2.0 support with two ports on the back panel and four through internal headers. The back panel IO has DisplayPort and HDMI outputs for onboard video, the Wi-Fi adapter, NIC, and gold plated audio with SPDIF.
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sor - Friday, October 20, 2017 - link
Damn. At least key it differently and call it LGA1151v2 or something.The changes are so minimal it really does seem like planned obsolescence. Does it really need more power pins to support new chips with the same power envelopes? Really? They couldn’t handle that on the CPU PCB?
KaarlisK - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Actually it is ~1.5 times peak current with the same average power envelope, so yes, they need the change.If they had not brought the launch forward and just launched together with the cheap chipsets, there would be far less complaints.
sor - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Where did you find information indicating current has increased 50%? I just spent about ten minutes trying to find a reference backing that up, perhaps something indicating the 8 series operates at a much lower voltage within same TDP, which would translate to higher current but they seem to operate in the same 1.2-1.3v range.You’re not just assuming they draw more current because they have two more cores, are you?
KaarlisK - Sunday, October 22, 2017 - link
Notice the difference between average and peak.And the information is in publicly available documents. I did not bother to look it up, but others have, for example: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/intel-coffee-la...
Crono - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Nice roundup. That's a lot of motherboards to spec and summarize. I especially appreciate the handy chart at the end, it's a good, quick-and-dirty comparison tool.Landcross - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
You guys forgot 2 new Z370 boards from Supermicro :)https://motherboarddb.com/motherboards/?chipset=19...
Xpl1c1t - Sunday, October 22, 2017 - link
The mITX board looks incredible.+ Low ESR Tantalum capacitors! (first time seeing them on VRM duty on a mainboard)
+ HDMI 2.0
+ 2x M.2 Slots
+ USB 3.1 Type C
+ Optical SPDIF
- RGB.......
MadAd - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Great write up but for me its just another depressing generation of oversized, overpriced ATX form factor offerings on which the vast majority of users wont even plug a second gpu into, with the smaller and more size appropriate FF represented as a minority afterthought.With all the progress of PCs since the 90s whod have thought that I could still use the same ATX case today while every single other component (from floppy drives to 2d Mattrox cards) have long gone to the recyclers. I find it so annoying how manufacturers have stuck on this prehistoric gargantuan case size with the other sizes being an afterthought. It feels like like stifled innovation while everything else is moving on.
rocky12345 - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Great article and a lot of work put in to get it out for us to read thank you.My only issue is and it is nit your fault is why these companies feel the need to totally blanket the market with basically the same boards just a different model number and basically a few tiny changes and spray paint it a different color and use the word gaming and put something x or x1 or k,k3 etc etc. For crap sakes just release three models not 7-10 models of the same crap it is pretty much just greed I guess.
The whole market is like this now with anything computer related of and if it has the words GAMING or RGB in it's got to be good for sure. My fav is that gaming mouse pad next it will have RGB lighting in it...lol
CitizenZer0 - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
Agreed