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 ESTASUS ROG STRIX Z370-G Gaming
The 'Strix Z370-G Gaming' micro-ATX motherboard bridges the gap between the ATX and ITX segments and represents a balance of having key features of its bigger ATX brothers, but whilst having a slightly larger footprint and offering more room for expansion over its ITX siblings.
This board has virtually identical specifications to the smaller Strix Z370-I Gaming board: the Strix Z370-G uses the Realtek ALC1220 audio codec, renamed to the SupremeFX S1220A in accordance with their branding; they also share the same dual antenna 802.11ac MU-MIMO capable Wi-Fi adapter as well as an Intel I219-V Gigabit Ethernet controller.
The Strix Z370-G Gaming has two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (run in x16 or x8/x8) which both feature SafeSlot with support for both two-way SLI and two-way Crossfire configurations. The only limitation with this is slot spacing as due to PCB sizing limitations, only cards with coolers two slots or below will manage to fit in multi-GPU setups; a good way of beating this is with custom water cooling, but this comes at the requirement of extra space in the chassis as well as cost (we also think that NVIDIA has stopped giving SLI certification to micro-ATX boards with the main slots in the 1/4 configuration). Below each of the full-length PCIe slots are PCI x1 slots for installation of various types of expansion cards or adapters.
There are plenty of options for storage as the Z370-G Gaming features six SATA ports and two M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slots. Although not so much of a major concern, and more of a casualty of lack of PCB space, ASUS had to think outside the box to fit dual M.2 slots on this board. One of these M.2 slots can be found just below the second PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, but the implementation of the second one is a little unorthodox. It can be found to the right of the DIMM slots, just below the 24pin ATX motherboard power connector and actually sticks out vertically out into the case. This can be looked two ways: firstly it could potentially allow natural thermodynamics and airflow to keep the drive cool and secondly, a bit of a heretical design, especially for fans of cleaner looking systems.
ASUS seems to have focused a lot on memory compatibility with the launch of Coffee Lake, either that or their R&D team has had some very good yields throughout samples as all of their Z370 boards at launch are rated to have support for at least DDR4-3866. The Z370-G goes above this, following suit with the Strix Z370-E and Z370-F Gaming models, as all three boards feature four DIMM slots capable of supporting up to 64GB but also have compatibility for memory speeds of up to DDR4-4000, CPU memory controller permitting. Scattered around the board are four variable fan headers which allow use for PWM compatible fans in addition to a dedicated pump header for water cooling and a single thermal sensor header.
A common and clear trend with the majority of the Z370 line up from ASUS is the use of the Intel's I219-V Gigabit LAN controller combined with the rebranded SupremeFX S1220A (Realtek’s ALC1220) audio codec. For micro-ATX, the board has plenty of bells and whistles with 2x2 802.11ac MU-MIMO Wi-Fi, two USB 3.1 10Gbps Type-A ports, two USB 3.1 5 Gbps ports, and two USB 2.0 Type-A ports. Unfortunately, there are no Type-C ports whatsoever featured, although a combo PS/2 port is present in its place. There are available headers for a front panel USB as well as headers for two more USB 3.1 5 Gbps ports and up to four USB 2.0 ports in total. The display output from the CPUs on-board graphics can be utilized via a single HDMI port with a DisplayPort nestled right above it. Finishing off the rear I/O is a selection of 3.5mm audio jacks and a digital S/PDIF output.
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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.