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 ESTECS Z370 Lightsaber
ECS hasn’t had many boards to offer the enthusiast segment in a couple of generations, mostly focusing on the business class chipsets, like the H110 and B250. However they have continually released at least one 'enthusiast' class board per generation, more recently under the name of 'Lightsaber' or 'Claymore'. The Claymore didn’t make it to Z270, but the Lightsaber did, as well as a mITX board. With Z370 and Coffee Lake processors being released, ECS has announced their Z370-Lightsaber motherboard. This board, we are told, is targeted at gamers.
As far as looks go, the Z370 Lightsaber is fairly plain with a black PCB, black VRM heatsinks, and black and grey memory slots. There isn’t a shroud covering the rear panel, with the silver ports and the audio area in full view. The VRM heatsinks are connected via a heat pipe and look like they can do the job, with multiple rows of fins to increase surface area and aid in heat dissipation. The Lightsaber does have four RGB LED headers on the bottom which are adjustable through the BIOS, although no RGB LED elements present built into the board.
As with most ATX motherboards, we get four memory slots supporting up to 64GB in capacity, although ECS quotes the maximum supported memory speed as only DDR4-3200, compared to the DDR4-4000 range we are seeing on most other boards. The board does have three full-length PCIe slots, and three PCIe x1 for expansion. The board only supports AMD Crossfire and not NVIDIA SLI, and so the lane breakdown would be x16/x4 from the CPU for the two primary slots with the last slot being PCIe 3.0 x4 and fed from the chipset.
Storage options consist of two M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slots, with one of them supporting SATA as well. The top slot is able to hold 110mm drive while the bottom slot supports up to 80mm devices. The board comes with six SATA ports supporting RAID 0, 1,5, and 10, and has a total of five fan headers scattered around the board - one by the CPU area, another by the ATX 24 pin power connector, two across the bottom of the board, and one just below the left VRM heatsink. Audio duties are handled by the ALC1150 codec, which was last generation’s flagship model. The audio is not EMI shielded but does have independent power delivery to minimize any interference. Nichicon audio capacitors, as well as gold plated contacts round out the audio portion. The Lightsaber, a gaming-focused board, has chosen the Rivet Networks Killer E2500 network controller, and takes advantage of the network controlling features therein. The board comes with a three-digit debug LED (rather than a two-digit one) as well as onboard start/reset buttons. On the bottom of the board, there are buttons for one-touch overclocking, BIOS selection, BIOS updating, and a ROM backup button which should make backups and updates to the dual BIOS easier.
For USB connectivity, there is a total of 10 USB ports on the back panel. Two USB 3.1 (10 Gbps - only Type-A) from an ASMedia controller, four USB 3.1 (5 Gbps), and four USB 2.0. The back panel also has a single PS/2 port, a clear CMOS button, DisplayPort and HDMI video outputs, the Killer E2500 NIC, and the audio stack plus SPDIF (above the video outputs).
Pricing nor availability was listed for the ECS Z370-Sabertooth. The Z270 Lightsaber was released at $199 and due to the similarities between the boards, we expect this to be priced similarly.
| ECS Z370-Lightsaber | |
| Warranty Period | 3 Years |
| Product Page | Link |
| Price | N/A |
| Size | ATX |
| CPU Interface | LGA1151 |
| Chipset | Intel Z370 Express |
| Memory Slots (DDR4) | Four DDR4 Supporting 64GB Dual Channel Support DDR4 3200+ |
| Network Connectivity | 1 x Rivet Networks Killer E2500 LAN |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC1150 |
| PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) |
1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots @ x16 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots @ x4 |
| PCIe Slots for Other (from Chipset) |
1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots @ x4 3 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots @ x1 |
| Onboard SATA | 6 x Supporting RAID 0/1/5/10 |
| Onboard SATA Express | None |
| Onboard M.2 | 2 x PCIe 3.0 x4 - NVMe or SATA |
| Onboard U.2 | None |
| USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) | 2 x Type-A 10Gbps (ASMedia) |
| USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) aka USB 3.0 |
4 x Rear Panel 1 x Header |
| USB 2.0 | 4 x Rear Panel 2 x Headers |
| Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin EATX 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V |
| Fan Headers | 2 x CPU 2 x System 1 x Power |
| IO Panel | 1 x PS.2 keyboard/mouse port 1 x DisplayPort 1 x HDMI Port 2 x USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports (Type-A) 4 x USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports 4 x USB 2.0 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port 1 x Optical S/PDIF out 6 x Audio Jacks |
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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