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 ESTEVGA Z370 Micro
EVGA’s third board is the micro-ATX form factor Z370 Micro. Though smaller than the ATX format, the Z370 Micro offers an external clock generator, 2-way SLI support, wireless connectivity, and an M.2 slot for high-speed storage. It has plenty of USB support, however, it does not have USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports without buying an add-in card. It looks like a lot of considerations went into cable management by the use of horizontal headers on the bottom of the board as well as the unique notching for the 24-pin ATX connector and the supplemental 6-pin PCIe header on the bottom of the board.
Like its ATX brothers, the board is black and does not have any designs on the PCB. The power delivery heatsinks are black with some extended surface area - the chipset heatsink is also black with a few lines cut out giving it a bit more surface area. A debug LED and power/reset buttons are in the upper right-hand corner by the dual BIOS switch. Also noteworthy is the addition of an optional 4-pin EPS 12V by the CPU, alongside a regular 8-pin. From the images we have, there doesn’t appear to be native RGB LEDs, however, it does have two RGB headers for adding LED strips.
Contrary to other micro-ATX boards in this roundup, the Z370 Micro only has two memory DIMM slots instead of four, but both of these are reinforced. Only having two slots means that the maximum memory support is 32 GB, and EVGA is quoting a maximum memory support up to DDR4-4133. With the memory slots reinforced, there are also two full-length PCIe slots that are also reinforced, supporting x16 or x8/x8, and is good for 2-way SLI or Crossfire. The final PCIe slot is a PCIe x4 from the chipset.
The Z370 Micro supports six SATA ports and a single M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slot between the PCIe slots that will fit up to an 80mm module. For system cooling, the board has six 4-pin PWM headers around the board to attach compatible fans. Audio duties are handled by the Realtek ALC1220 codec., although there does not appear to be distinct PCB separation or EMI shielding, both commonly used by motherboard manufacturers to reduce signal interference in the audio. Networking comes via a single Intel I219-V GbE.
The rear panel is one of the few Z370 boards that has no video outputs, requiring a discrete graphics card for some video output. On the rear panel we find a Clear CMOS button, two USB 2.0 ports, a combination PS/2 connector, six USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) ports, the Intel network port, and the audio jacks with SPDIF. There is also a slot for an M.2 E-Key device, which usually takes the form of a Wi-Fi module. Users will have to supply their own (as far as we know).
| EVGA Z370 Micro | ||
| Warranty Period | 3 Years | |
| Product Page | Link | |
| Price | N/A | |
| Size | ATX | |
| CPU Interface | LGA1151 | |
| Chipset | Intel Z370 Express | |
| Memory Slots (DDR4) | Two DDR4 Supporting 32GB Dual Channel Support DDR4 4133+ |
|
| Network Connectivity | 1 x Intel I219-V 1 x M.2 Key-E for Wi-Fi |
|
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC1220 | |
| PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) | 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slot (x16 or x8/x8) | |
| PCIe Slots for Other (from Chipset) | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 | |
| Onboard SATA | 6 x Supporting RAID 0/1/5/10 | |
| Onboard SATA Express | None | |
| Onboard M.2 | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 | |
| Onboard U.2 | None | |
| USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) | None | |
| USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) | 6 x Back Panel 1 x Header |
|
| USB 2.0 | 2 x Back Panel 2 x Headers |
|
| Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin EATX 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V 1 x 4-pin ATX 12V |
|
| Fan Headers | 6 x PWM | |
| IO Panel | Clear CMOS 1 x Combination PS/2 2 x USB 2.0 6 x USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) 1 x Intel Network Port Audio Jacks 1 x M.2 Key-E for Wi-Fi |
|
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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.