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 HD3
The last of the nine GIGABYTE boards for this article is the entry-level Z370 HD3. The HD3 slides in below the HD3P, and despite the minor name difference, has a more different layout than expected. The HD3 is a board for the budget conscious looking to get into the platform at the lowest entry point. For example, the HD3 does not have USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports on the board, has only one M.2 slot instead of two or three, and doesn't have slot reinforcement on any PCIe or DIMM slot.
The HD3's appearance is nearly a carbon copy of the HD3P, except the grey stenciling is on the board and chipset heatsink only, and is not on the VRM heatsinks. The memory slots are the same two black and two gray, while all PCIe slots (none with reinforcement) are grey with the PCIe x1 slots in black. The PCH heatsink is also carried over. The only non-standard LEDs on the board is the audio separation line and the XMP notification in the top right-hand corner.
Users still receive the full complement of four memory slots supporting up to 64GB in capacity, while GIGABYTE states a maximum supported speed of up to DDR4-4000. For PCIe, the two full-length slots are wired to run in an x16/x4 configuration driven by the CPU with the third also running at x4 speeds but fed from the chipset. That said, there is only support for 2-Way AMD Crossfire or AMD Quad-GPU Crossfire (2x dual GPU cards) as SLI requires x8 per slot minimum.
As mentioned earlier, the HD3 is down to one M.2 slot, the least on any of the Gigabyte boards. For most users that might be of little concern as they only have one M.2 based drive. The board contains six SATA ports supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10, rounding out storage connectivity. There are a total of four fan headers on the board, with one to the right of the VRM heatsink on top, another close to the EPS 12V connector, while the other two system fans are at the bottom of the board and on the middle right side just above the SATA ports. The included Smart Fan 5 application is still able to control the hybrid PWM/Voltage controlled headers. The audio codec on the HD3 steps down to the ALC892 codec. It also does not have EMI shielding but the board design still separates the boards analog audio components from the digital components on the PCB. For networking, one of Intel's GbE LAN chips covers the network side for the HD3.
The USB side of the house is going to be fairly straightforward. From the chipset, the board has eight USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports with four on the back panel and for more available through internal USB headers. Users will also find six more USB 2.0 ports with two on the back panel, and four more available through internal USB headers. There are no USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports on this board, allowing for cost savings, although users can still purchase USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) PCIe cards to expand functionality if needed. The back panel IO also includes a combination PS/2 port, a DVI-D video output, a HDMI video output, and the audio jacks.
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weevilone - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
Notable that though the new boards are often very similar to their Z270 predecessors, Asus has dropped Thunderbolt 3 support from the Maximus X Hero board.masouth - Thursday, October 26, 2017 - link
ASUS ROG Z370 Maximus X Hero"....new metallic heat sinks that are an upgrade over the plastic heatsinks found on the Z270 version"
Please excuse my ignorance because I didn't own a ROG Z270 mb but...plastic HEAT SINKS? Not shrouds or decoration over a heat sink but the actual heat sinks themselves? That's either wrong, they performed their job pretty poorly, or plastic resins have advanced a lot farther in thermal conductivity (and cost for such) than I realized.
flowrush - Sunday, November 19, 2017 - link
"The other main distinguishable feature is the inclusion of integrated 802.11ac Wi-Fi with an antenna (that can only be described as a shark fin) found on the F."The above is incorrect in the article. The integrated Wi-Fi module with antenna is found on the E not the F.
Coldgame - Saturday, November 25, 2017 - link
I'm looking to build a rig with the Z370 Gaming ITX/ac, a GTX-1070 card and an Apple Thunderbolt Display.The review states:
"The key difference in the support between the two boards is going to be the Thunderbolt 3 port on the Gaming-ITX. This port supports video outputs..."
So, can anyone confirm or deny that video generated by the GTX-1070 can be output through the onboard Thunderbolt 3 port?
hanselltc - Sunday, December 3, 2017 - link
Looking forward to low-middle end mITX choices from this platform. It'll probably be paired with a 8100/8300 and be my secondary machine.Roen - Sunday, February 4, 2018 - link
Where are the 10 Gbps ports on the back? They all look like 5 Gbps ports, even the Type C.rbarak - Wednesday, February 21, 2018 - link
Is anyone using the Z370-P on Linux with two screens?I built a new machine based on the Z370-P, and both the DVI and the HDMI connected screens show the same image, and the RHEL7 setup/displays show only one Unknown Display.
I follwed the advice on stackexchange, and added this line:
$ grep GRUB_CMDLINE_LINE_DEFAULT /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINE_DEFAULT="i915.alpha_support=1"
Then I did:
sudo grub2-mkconfig -o "$(readlink /etc/grub2.conf)"
And rebooted, but still, the two displays are not shown.
dromoxen - Wednesday, May 9, 2018 - link
Shocked to see that both the Asrock mitx boards are "szie=ATX" .. LOLThe addition of Tunderbolt sure seems to add a hefty premium £120 vs £160 , luckily I can do without.
Kroebo - Sunday, October 7, 2018 - link
Sadly, I discovered that the ZUG Gaming PLUS doesn't support SLI.trag - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
On the ASrock Z370M Pro4 the M.2 slot information is backwards. Both slots support NVME. One slot also supports SATA. As written, "The first M.2 slot is SATA only while the second supports PCIe." it seems to say that one slot is SATA only and the other slot is PCIe (NVME) only.