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 K3
The Z370 AORUS Gaming K3 motherboard fits in towards the bottom of the Gaming motherboards but has many of the features users need to be a solid gaming motherboard. Gone is the Killer E2500 NIC and replaced with an Intel I219-V chip. The back panel I/O adds a DVI output for onboard video connection but removes the OC button found on the Gaming 3. RGB Fusion support is still here along with RGBW headers, as well as keeping two M.2 slots.
Between the Gaming 3 and K3 there are few design changes between them. The black PCB and Falcon make its appearance along with the four DIMM slots alternating red and black. The biggest design difference between the two is the lack of a shroud to cover the I/O area. This is a small cost saving measure at the expense of a clean look around back panel IO as well as the RGB LEDs being relegated to the audio separation line and the PCH heatsink. Additional RGB LED strips can be added using any of the four headers (2 RGBW, two digital) all controlled by the RGB Fusion software.
The four memory slots and DDR4-4000 memory support matches the Gaming 3, and a capacity of up to 64GB is supported. The PCIe slot configuration is also the same as the Gaming 3, with four PCIe 1x slots fed from the chipset, and two full length, fortified slots running at x16/x4 with the x4 coming from the chipset. We again see Crossfire support, but not NVIDIA SLI.
The board has six SATA ports, with four located to the right of the PCH heatsink, and two facing vertically just below it and to the right of the front panel headers. The two M.2 slots are also in the same location as the Gaming 3 and support the same size drives. These are located just above the top PCIe 1x slot and just above the bottom full-length PCIe slot. Onboard audio is still handled by the Realtek ALC1220 codec, is shielded for EMI, has audio separation from the rest of the board, and uses the WIMA and Nichicon audio caps. In a cost-saving measure, the board uses an Intel-based NIC instead of the Killer Networks E2500 found on the Gaming 3. WiFi is not found on this board either. Thunderbolt 3 support is handled with an add-in card as well.
USB connectivity is a bit different here, at least on the USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) side. There are a total of eight possible USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports from four on the back panel and four available through internal USB headers. For USB2.0/1.1 there are six in total with two ports on the back panel and 4 ports available through the internal USB headers. The ASMedia 3142 controller handles the USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) Type-C and Type-A(red) ports found on the back panel. The back panel IO has a single PS/2 port, removes the OC button, and adds a DVI port. The audio stack does not have SPDIF.
The Z370 AORUS Gaming K3 has a few cost-saving measures compared to the Gaming 3 such as swapping the Killer NIC for Intel, and removing the back panel IO shroud, and secures its place a bit lower in the product stack. While fully featured, the lack of SLI support will have those with multiple NVIDIA GPUs looking at other products in the stack for the necessary support.
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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