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 ESTASRock Z370 Pro4
The ASRock Z370 Pro4 falls on the lower end of the Z370 lineup and with that, a few of the features we’ve seen on the other boards don’t manage to make their way here. In an effort to shave a few dollars off, the Pro4 uses one VRM heatsink located on top of the left set, while the top set is left without a heatsink. In some cases, particularly when overclocking, this can lead to overheating, although this is more of an entry-level product. The board is free of any slot reinforcement, but has two M.2 slots, but only one of which is PCIe 3.0 x4 and the other supports only SATA based M.2 drives.
The Pro4’s design is predominately black, with a grey print on the PCB starting from the top of the audio section working its way by the PCIe slots through the chipset heatsink to the edge of the board. For the power delivery, the single heatsink and capacitors stick out on the board like drops of water on colored paper. The Pro4 does not look bad, but it is missing any window dressing (shrouds) and RGB LEDs. In fact, no RGB headers can be found on this board. (Ian: Perhaps that is a good thing.)
Even though this is an entry-level ‘Pro’ board, the full 64GB of memory can be used, with speeds up to DDR4-4266 listed as being supported. There are two full-length PCIe slots, but only the first is powered by the processor for x16 connectivity. The second full-length is a PCIe x4 from the chipset, and there are three other PCIe x1 slots also from the chipset. The final slot on the board is a legacy PCI slot. Overall, SLI is not supported, however Crossfire in x16/x4 mode is a possibility.
Storage options include six SATA ports and two M.2 ports. The SATA ports support RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 and also share connectivity with the M.2 slots. If the first M.2 is occupied by a SATA type device, SATA 5 will be disabled. If the second M.2 slot has a SATA type device, SATA 0 will be disabled. Note only the top M.2 slot supports PCIe 3.0 x4 speeds, while the second M.2 slot is relegated to SATA only duties. For USB there are three USB 2.0 and one USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) headers.
Users will find four 4-pin fan headers on the board, with the Chassis Optional/Water Pump fan connector which can deliver a maximum of 1.5A/18W for water pumps that require extra power. The Realtek ALC892 audio codec is from the last generation and uses ELNA audio caps, and although this is a 7.1 channel audio codec, in order to configure 7.1 channel HD audio, the HD front panel audio is required and enabled through the driver. Networking duties are handled by the Intel I219-V gigabit Ethernet controller.
There is no USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) support here - instead, the back panel IO has five USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Type-A ports and one Type-C port. On the rest of the back panel, users can find a PS/2 port, D-Sub/DVI-D/HDMI video outputs, and a three-jack audio stack.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
83 Comments
View All Comments
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.