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 Z370M Pro4
The last few boards from ASRock will be of the small form factor variety. We normally do not see too many options in this space, especially close to the chipset launch. ASRock got a head start with shrinking the ATX sized Pro4 to the micro-ATX format and calls it the Z370M Pro4. The Z370M Pro4 uses the same power delivery setup as the full-sized twin, albeit on a shorter board. Even though its smaller in size, there are two full-length PCIe slots as well as two M.2 slots. It looks to have very similar features, just in a smaller package.
For aesthetics, a gray color runs across the board from the top of the audio section through the PCIe area and past the chipset to the edge of the board. The chipset heatsink gets much smaller on the micro-ATX version due to the less free real estate on the smaller board. Outside of that, we get the same single VRM heatsink, the same capacitors, and the same vanilla appearance. Users will not find an RGB LED on the board, nor a header to add one.
Even in mATX form, we get four memory slots which handle up to 64GB, with a rated supported speed up to DDR4-4300. There are two full-length PCIe slots, the first from the CPU at x16 and the second from the chipset at x4, and two open-ended x1 slots to round out PCIe connections.
Six SATA ports can be found on the board, with four mounted horizontally and two vertically a bit further up the board. All the SATA ports support RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. The Z370M Pro4 also has two M.2 slots, with both able to fit an 80mm module. The first M.2 slot is SATA only while the second supports PCIe. Due to lane sharing, if the first M.2 socket is occupied by a SATA type M.2 device, SATA 0 will be disabled.
The board has four fan headers, two for the CPU (1 x 3-pin, 1 x 4-pin) and two 4-pin chassis fan connectors that auto-detect if a three or four pin fan is in use. Audio duties are taken care of by the Realtek ALC892 codec and uses ELNA audio caps. Network support is handled by a single Intel I219-V GbE. Thunderbolt support is not found on the Z370M Pro4.
USB support on the back panel consists of four USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Type-A ports and one Type-C port. Additionally, there is one USB 2.0 port. The rest of the back panel IO contains separate PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard, D-Sub/DVI-D/HDMI video outputs, Intel gigabit Ethernet, and the three-jack audio stack.
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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