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 ESTMSI Z370M Mortar
The Mortar’s appearance does have a more rugged look compared to the other MSI micro-ATX board, the Z370M Gaming Pro AC. The Mortar’s back panel cover looks like it was taken from a military vehicle with the aesthetic only screws on both ends giving it an industrial feel. The heatsinks are simple grey with a red line through the middle, in contrast to the jet black PCB that has some grey design features on the board. There are no onboard RGB LEDs, with the only support provided through an onboard header. A single full-length PCIe slot is reinforced, with the focus for this board on single GPU setups. The PCH heatsink is a diminutive piece with the MSI name on it in white letters with red accents and is attached via pushpins.
MSI still uses all four memory slots here, capable of up to 64 GB and on-the-box speeds of DDR4-4000. Despite the industrial feel to the board, there is no memory slot reinforcement here, and MSI has used dual-sided latch mechanisms over the single-sided latch versions we sometimes see on high-end motherboards. For PCIe, the top reinforced slot handles the main add-in card duty, supporting PCIe 3.0 x16 direct from the processor. The other full-length slot is a PCIe x4 slot from the chipset, and the board also has two smaller PCIe x1 slots in between.
As with the other MSI micro-ATX board, there is only four SATA ports here, with two in a 'regular' position and the other two sitting vertically on the board just below the 24-pin ATX connector. These last two are also right next to a USB 3.0 internal header, and in a position that might make it difficult to release locking SATA cables if a front panel cable is attached to the USB 3.0 header. Other storage comes via dual M.2 slots, with the Mortar supporting 80mm drives in both, however, the first slot is PCIe only, with the second slot able to do both PCIe and SATA.
The Mortar will accept a total of four fans with its 4-pin headers, two of which are located around the chipset. The 4-pin headers support both PWM and voltage control. Network connectivity is through a sole Intel I219-V gigabit Ethernet controller, with the price of this board meaning that Wi-Fi is not present. The audio codec is also lower than 'normal' to save a few pennies, however the Realtek ALC892 codec still offers 7.1 channel support. MSI has at least offered some PCB separation to reduce electrical interference with the audio paths.
USB Support for the Mortar is missing the latest USB 3.1 (10 Gbps), but it has a total of eight USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports: there are four Type-A on the back panel, and four more available through the two internal headers. The board also has two USB 2.0 ports on the back panel and two internal headers. The rest of the Mortar’s panel consists of a combination PS/2 port, DVI-D/HDMI/DisplayPort video outputs, the network connection, and the audio jacks with SPDIF.
| MSI Z370M Mortar | |
| Warranty Period | 3 Years |
| Product Page | Link |
| Price | N/A |
| Size | Micro-ATX |
| CPU Interface | LGA1151 |
| Chipset | Intel Z370 Express |
| Memory Slots (DDR4) | Four DDR4 Supporting 64GB Dual Channel Support DDR4 4000+ |
| Network Connectivity | 1 x Intel I219-V |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC892 |
| PCIe from CPU | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots |
| PCIe from Chipset | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 2 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots |
| Onboard SATA | 4 x Supporting RAID 0/1/5/10 |
| Onboard SATA Express | None |
| Onboard M.2 | 2 x PCIe 3.0 x4 Slot 1 PCIe only Slot 2 PCIe or SATA |
| Onboard U.2 | None |
| USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) | N/A |
| USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) | 4 x Back Panel 2 x Headers |
| USB 2.0 | 2 x Back Panel 2 x Headers |
| Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin EATX 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V |
| Fan Headers | 1 x 4-pin CPU 1 x 4-pin Waterpump 2 x 4-pin System Fan (All PWM or Voltage controlled) |
| IO Panel | 1 x Combination PS/2 2 x USB 2.0 1 x DisplayPort 1 x DVI-D port 1 x HDMI port 1 x LAN (RJ45) port 4 x USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Type-A ports 5 x Audio Jacks + SPDIF |
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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.