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 Gaming WiFi (Wi-Fi)
Our next board in the GIGABYTE Z370 lineup is the Gaming WIFI. This board appears to find itself in the somewhere around the Gaming 3 and Gaming K3 in the product stack. The board uses the Creative Sound Core3D audio over the more traditional ALC1220 in a nod towards 'gaming'. As the name implies, the Gaming WIFI includes Intel WiFi in addition to the Intel NIC.
On the appearance side of things, the Gaming WIFI looks strikingly similar to the Gaming 3. The difference here is the removal of the red parts to black parts, such as the all-black DRAM slots and all-black PCIe slots. The only red remaining comes from the back panel IO shroud, and the WIMA caps in the audio section. Otherwise, its the same board, appearance wise, from the PCH heatsink to the AORUS Falcon prominently stenciled on the board. We get RGB LEDs on the heatsink and audio separation line, but also LEDs around the VRM area on the Gaming WIFI.
Memory support on this board is the same as the K3 and Gaming 3, supporting a capacity up to 64GB and speeds to DDR4-4000. The PCIe slot arrangement changes a bit and consists of two reinforced, CPU fed, full-length slots running at x16 and x8/x8, supporting AMD Crossfire and NVIDIA SLI, and another full-length slot running at x4 driven by the chipset PCIe lanes. Users will also see three PCIe 1x slots also fed from the chipset.
The board has six SATA ports, to the right of the PCH heatsink and parallel to the board. The M.2 slots are above the top PCIe 1x slot and the second is above the bottom, non-fortified full-length PCIe slot. They support drives in 110mm and 80mm length respectively. The Gaming WIFI has a total of five hybrid fan headers located around the board and can be controlled by the Smart Fan 5 application. Two RGBW headers and two digital LED headers are there to use if the included RGBs are not satisfactory. The onboard audio moves away from the Realtek ALC1220 codec and uses the Creative SOund Core3D audio, and has EMI shielding and uses Nichicon and WIMA audio caps. For networking, the Killer E2500 NIC found on the Gaming 3 is replaced by an Intel GbE LAN. This motherboard supports Thunderbolt 3 via an add-in card, and the connector for the card is located between the last full-length PCIe slot and the bottom 1x slot.
USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) duties are handled by an ASMedia 3142 controller giving Type-C and Type-A ports on the back panel IO. From the chipset, there are a total of 10 USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports with six on the back panel and another four available through the internal USB headers. Also sourced from the chipset are two USB 2.0/1.1 ports through internal USB headers. Additionally, the Gaming WIFI gains two more USB 2.0/1.1 ports through a Genesys Logic USB 2.0 hub and can be accessed through internal USB headers as well. The rest of the back panel IO consists of a combination PS/2 port, the Intel 3165 WiFi adapter, an HDMI output, and a gold plated audio stack including a SPDIF port.
The Gaming WIFI has an interesting set of features with the inclusion of Wi-Fi, and using the Creative Sound Core3D audio instead of the Realtek solution. This also gives users an option of using SPDIF which the Gaming 3 and K3 lack. Also supported is SLI.
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sor - Friday, October 20, 2017 - link
Damn. At least key it differently and call it LGA1151v2 or something.The changes are so minimal it really does seem like planned obsolescence. Does it really need more power pins to support new chips with the same power envelopes? Really? They couldn’t handle that on the CPU PCB?
KaarlisK - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Actually it is ~1.5 times peak current with the same average power envelope, so yes, they need the change.If they had not brought the launch forward and just launched together with the cheap chipsets, there would be far less complaints.
sor - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Where did you find information indicating current has increased 50%? I just spent about ten minutes trying to find a reference backing that up, perhaps something indicating the 8 series operates at a much lower voltage within same TDP, which would translate to higher current but they seem to operate in the same 1.2-1.3v range.You’re not just assuming they draw more current because they have two more cores, are you?
KaarlisK - Sunday, October 22, 2017 - link
Notice the difference between average and peak.And the information is in publicly available documents. I did not bother to look it up, but others have, for example: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/intel-coffee-la...
Crono - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Nice roundup. That's a lot of motherboards to spec and summarize. I especially appreciate the handy chart at the end, it's a good, quick-and-dirty comparison tool.Landcross - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
You guys forgot 2 new Z370 boards from Supermicro :)https://motherboarddb.com/motherboards/?chipset=19...
Xpl1c1t - Sunday, October 22, 2017 - link
The mITX board looks incredible.+ Low ESR Tantalum capacitors! (first time seeing them on VRM duty on a mainboard)
+ HDMI 2.0
+ 2x M.2 Slots
+ USB 3.1 Type C
+ Optical SPDIF
- RGB.......
MadAd - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Great write up but for me its just another depressing generation of oversized, overpriced ATX form factor offerings on which the vast majority of users wont even plug a second gpu into, with the smaller and more size appropriate FF represented as a minority afterthought.With all the progress of PCs since the 90s whod have thought that I could still use the same ATX case today while every single other component (from floppy drives to 2d Mattrox cards) have long gone to the recyclers. I find it so annoying how manufacturers have stuck on this prehistoric gargantuan case size with the other sizes being an afterthought. It feels like like stifled innovation while everything else is moving on.
rocky12345 - Saturday, October 21, 2017 - link
Great article and a lot of work put in to get it out for us to read thank you.My only issue is and it is nit your fault is why these companies feel the need to totally blanket the market with basically the same boards just a different model number and basically a few tiny changes and spray paint it a different color and use the word gaming and put something x or x1 or k,k3 etc etc. For crap sakes just release three models not 7-10 models of the same crap it is pretty much just greed I guess.
The whole market is like this now with anything computer related of and if it has the words GAMING or RGB in it's got to be good for sure. My fav is that gaming mouse pad next it will have RGB lighting in it...lol
CitizenZer0 - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
Agreed