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 HD3P
Continuing in the Ultra Durable line, we slide further down the stack and run into the Z370 HD3P. The HD3P looks to do away with a lot of bells and whistles, but still comes well appointed. The HD3P includes USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports, Intel GbE LAN with ESD protection, dual M.2 slots, RGB Fusion for RGB LED support (up to 7 colors), and uses the Realtek ALC1220 codec.
Aesthetically, the Ultra Durable line looks different than the Gaming series of boards. The HD3P has the same artistic pattern on the PCB as the XP SLI, but with a more subdued gray stenciling, and only one reinforced PCIe slot for graphics. Keeping with the black and gray theme, two of the DIMM slots are black, while the other two are gray. There are no shrouds to speak of on the board either, leaving the silver color of the ports exposed. The only non-standard LEDs on the board are found on the audio separation line and the XMP display in the upper right-hand corner. There is one RGB LED header at the bottom of the board if the user needs to add more color and light things up inside the case.
We see the familiar four memory slots supporting 64GB of RAM, with speeds up to DDR4-4000 officially supported. The PCIe layout is different to the previous GIGABYTE boards: the first slot is steel reinforced and is the primary x16 slot powered by the processor; the second gray slot is a PCIe x4 from the chipset; the final large connector on the board is a PCI slot, not PCIe. Additionally, there are four PCIe x1 slots which are also fed from the chipset. The board only supports AMD Crossfire configurations due to the x4 lane not meeting NVIDIA criteria for SLI (x8 minimum). The gray PCIe x4 slot is disabled when an SSD is installed in the second M.2 slot as it shares bandwidth.
For storage, we can see the HD3P has two M.2 slots and a total of six SATA ports supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. There are a total of four hybrid fan headers found on the board with one positioned to the right of top VRM heatsink and another next to the EPS 12V connector. The third is on the right side of the board above the SATA ports, while the last one is at the bottom of the board next to the front panel headers. All can be controlled via the Smart Fan 5 application. The audio side is handled by the Realtek ALC1220 codec using Nichicon audio caps (no WIMA) and does not have EMI shielding. A single Intel GbE NIC is used for network connectivity and has ESD and Surge protection.
USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) functionality is handled by an ASMedia 3142 controller with a Type-C and Type-A port on the back panel IO. Another USB Type-C (5 Gbps) port is available through the internal USB header. USB3.1 (5 Gbps) is supported through the chipset and gives users a total of six ports; four are found on the back panel, and two ports via the internal USB header. USB 2.0 support also goes through the chipset and has two ports on the back panel and another four through internal headers. For the rest of the back panel IO, the HD3P has a combination PS/2 port, audio jacks, DVI-D, HDMI, and a D-Sub output.
The HD3P has fewer bells and whistles than the higher end boards as expected, but makes up for it a bit with the integration of legacy items like a PCI slot as well as a D-Sub for video. Still, there are plenty of modern platform amenities featured for a lower-end budget board.
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carldon - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Excellent summary and table in the last page. Good work!!!imaheadcase - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
I got a few questions:1. Why do they put USB 2.0 ports if USB 3.0 is backward compatible anyways? Why not just all USB 3.0 ports..it can't be price.
2. Why do they have such a vary in memory timings? For %99 of people memory timings are not really a big deal right? Maybe in old PC days it was.
3. Mini-ITX vs Micro-ITX..isn't it silly both exist in first place? Any reason for this..the diminsions are really close to the same. In fact, most Micro-ITX is simply removing lots of stuff from mobo that you really want to begin with.
lordsutch - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
I'd imagine they want to offer as many ports as they can without taking away too many PCIe lanes. The other option would be to embed a USB 3.x switch (or a PCIe switch) but of course now each port wouldn't simultaneously be able to operate at peak speed and 3.x switches are probably more expensive than USB 2 controllers.imaheadcase - Sunday, October 22, 2017 - link
Ahh didn't think about that aspect.DanNeely - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Some USB audio and 2.4ghz wifi/bluetooth devices have had interference problems in 3.0 sockets. Dunno if they're fixed on new hardware (supposedly onboard hubs were a lot worse than chipset ports in this regard so room for QC to make it better); but even if they are there's going to be problems with once burned customers not trusting them.As pointed out elsewhere USB3 competes with PCIe lanes/SATA ports on the southbridge. Especially on full ATX boards if you go to max out the number of PCIe lanes to expansion slots and m.2 ports in addition to the lanes used on board for networking and audio you can get down to only a half dozen or so 3.0 lanes left from the chipset; but still able to hit 14 USB ports total by going USB2 with the rest.
People using older OSes (Windows 7 says hi) can't use USB3 ports to install the OS without jumping through a lot of hoops (the OS sees them as not USB2 and can't talk to them).
If any board size is at risk of going away it's probably full ATX; although for enthusiast sales I suspect it'll hold on better than mini ATX due to bigger is better irrationality.
MiniITX still has a decent capability gap vs mini ATX; but it's much smaller than it was a half dozen years ago when it only made sense if you were making a tiny box and were willing to accept major performance compromises to do so. Now as Mini ITX's capability continues to goes up and the need for expansion cards other than a single GPU goes down it's eating into an increasing chunk of Mini ATX's marketshare.
On the high side mainstream chips don't really have enough PCIe lanes to make good use of the extra 3 cards of space possible on the bigger boards/ Meanwhile multi-GPU gaming - the main reason an enthusiast would need a full size mobo is steadily going away (fewer games supporting it each year, no support for 3/4way at all in the newest cards from either company); and unless you need 2 GPUs + something else or extra space around the CPU for crazy OCing Mini ATX does almost everything that could be needed.
MadAd - Sunday, October 22, 2017 - link
> If any board size is at risk of going away it's probably full ATX; although for enthusiast sales I suspect it'll hold on better than mini ATX due to bigger is better irrationality.Irrationality indeed. I would have thought by now instead of a measly 5 mATX choices out of 50+ that it would be instead maybe 5 fullsize ATX with the main battleground being the two slot mATX market.
Its just laziness on the manufacturers side, with nobody steering the market to innovate on size. Theres nobody driving form factors, the CPU companies are present on all form factors so they dont need to drive change, the board partners are all set in their ways just slapping new images on mildly reworked designs so they dont have any need to innovate, weve seen video card manufacturers can shrink designs to better fit smaller factors but we still get chunky easy to produce cards for mainstream use as retooling would be an added cost, its just rolling train of new but nothing new generation after generation.
PC design is falling into mediocrity and I just wish the main players (intel+amd/board partners/nvidia+amd) would all get together to drive SFX/ITX and force retire ATX to the strictly enthusiast market, and maybe appeal to a more contemporary home user community (rather than just gamers which is where the marketing all seems to be these days) again too.
Liltorp - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
It is really true that the MSI PC Pro has a legacy PCI connector? I could use this for my TV tuner. But I thought PCI was not supported by newer boatds/CPU`s?Morawka - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Has anyone noticed how cheap these new Z370 motherboards are? Most are under $180 and there are several sub $130.IGTrading - Sunday, October 22, 2017 - link
Tell this to the guys that already spent money on non-Z370 just a few months ago.Intel is already screwing them.
It would have been funny to sell a 250 USD motherboard to a 7700K buyer just last month, telling him his 250 USD are a good investment because of the good upgradeability.
Just 4 weeks later tell him: "Well ... Yeah ... About that upgrade ... It will cost you a minimum of 110 USD extra + the 360 USD for the new 8700 K.
775 was the last good & long lived platform from Intel.
edzieba - Sunday, October 22, 2017 - link
If people brought Z370 boards expecting them to support an additional CPU generation, they did it in spite of every Intel CPU release for the last decade: two CPU gens socket generation. There's no counter to ignoring the past.