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 AORUS is starting off its entrance into the Z370 chipset with a total of nine offerings. The 'entry level' Ultra Durable lineup has three boards: the Z370XP SLI, HD3P, and HD3. The AORUS Gaming lineup has the other six boards, offering more features and glamor than the UD boards. From the flagship down there is the Gaming 7, Gaming 5, Ultra Gaming, Gaming 3, Gaming K3, and Gaming Wi-Fi. Each board will offer slightly features from a different VRM section, the number of M.2 connections, USB, networking, audio codecs, and more.
GIGABYTE Z370 Gaming 7
The AORUS Gaming 7 looks to be the brightest (literally) board of the bunch with RGB LEDs found in several places on the board: the IO cover, the VRM heatsink, by the VRMs on the board, between the DIMM slots, on the PCIe slots, the PCH heatsink, and finally, an aesthetic strip on the right side by the 24-pin ATX connector.
All of the full-length PCIe slots have steel reinforcement to prevent slot damage against heavy video cards. The Gaming 7 is the only board in the lineup to add power/reset and overclocking buttons on the PCB which are located in the upper right-hand corner. The Gaming 7 uses different chokes for the VRM from Coiltronics (FP 1007) - from the pictures provided, we are unable to tell if the MOSFETs or controller is different to the Gaming 5. For more BCLK range and flexibility for overclocking, there is a BCLK generator under the EMI shield between the top M.2 and PCIe slots.
The Gaming 7 uses of four reinforced DIMM slots with RGB LEDs in between. capable of up to 64GB of system memory. The supported memory speeds for the Gaming 7 (and Gaming 5) are the highest in the GIGABYTE lineup at DDR4-4133. The other boards will top out at DDR4-4000 by comparison. The PCIe slot locations allow for triple wide video cards to be used in a Dual GPU setup and are wired in an x16/x8/x4 configuration with the last slot powered by the chipset, meaning two-way SLI and three-way Crossfire are supported. PCIe x1 slots are located above the first, second, and last full-length PCIe slots and are fed from the chipset. The last PCIe slot shares bandwidth with the M2P_32G and will operate at up to 2x mode when using a PCIe SSD in that specific slot.
For SATA storage, we will see a pretty familiar theme across the entire lineup as each board will have six SATA ports. In the case of the Gaming 7, they are located to the right of the chipset heatsink and set at a right angle to the board. The three M.2 slots can be found just above the first PCIe x1 slot, below the first full-length slot, as well as the second. The top M.2 slot comes with a heatsink and will fit up to a 110mm device, while the other two slots support up to 80mm drives and do not come with a heatsink.
For users that connect chassis and system fans to the board directly, the Gaming 7 has a total of eight fan headers: the CPU fan and CPU_Opt are located by the socket between the DIMM slots and the VRM heatsink; Across the bottom are three system fan headers with a fourth hiding at the end of the top M.2 slot behind the rear I/O audio; the eighth fan header is located in the top right corner of the board. All headers are hybrid and can be controlled by PWM or voltage using the RGB Fusion software.
Audio is driven by the Realtek ALC1220 codec and uses an ESS Sabre DAC, Nichicon caps, and WIMA audio caps in an effort to improve headphone output. The Gaming 7 has dual NICs, using the Rivet Networks Killer E2500 controller alongside the Intel I219V. There is no Wi-Fi, which is perhaps an interesting omission on a flagship board - however the Gaming 5 does have WiFi. Thunderbolt 3 connectivity is maintained on the Gaming 7 with the header located in the bottom right-hand corner above the front panel headers.
USB support is a bit different here than the other GIGABYTE boards. The Gaming 7 has USB3.1 (10 Gbps) Type-C and Type-A headers on the rear I/O but also add a Type-C header for the front. USB3.1 (5 Gbps) shows a header for the front and five ports on the rear. The rear I/O is a bit more sparse without Wi-Fi, but it still includes Displayport and HDMI outputs for video, the two NICs, five USB 5 Gbps Type-A ports, and the two USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports (Type-A and Type-C).
The Gaming 7 comes with everything most users need including a lot of RGB LEDs and adds features such as a reinforced third PCIe slot, a Killer E2500 NIC, onboard Power/Reset/OC buttons, and improved headphone audio. About the only thing missing is Wi-Fi which could also be added via an add-in card.
| GIGABYTE Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 | |
| Warranty Period | 3 Years |
| Product Page | Link |
| Price | Amazon US |
| Size | ATX |
| CPU Interface | LGA1151 |
| Chipset | Intel Z370 Express |
| Memory Slots (DDR4) | Four DDR4 Supporting 64GB Dual Channel Support DDR4 4133+ Support for ECC UDIMM (operates in non-ECC mode) |
| Network Connectivity | 1 x Rivet Networks Killer E2500 LAN 1 x Intel GbE LAN |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC1220 |
| PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots @ x16 or x8 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots @ x8 |
| PCIe Slots for Other (from Chipset) | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots @ x4 3 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots @ x1 |
| Onboard SATA | 6 x Supporting RAID 0/1/5/10 |
| Onboard SATA Express | None |
| Onboard M.2 | 3 x PCIe 3.0 x4 - NVMe or SATA |
| Onboard U.2 | None |
| USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) | 1 x Type-C (ASMedia) 1 x Type-A (ASMedia) 1 x Type-C (ASMedia - through internal header) |
| USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) aka USB 3.0 |
5 x Back Panel 1 x Header |
| USB 2.0 | 2 x Headers |
| Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin EATX 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V 1 x 4-pin ATX 12V |
| Fan Headers | 1 x CPU 1 x Watercooling CPU 5 x System Fan headers 1 x 3A System Fan/ Water Pump header |
| IO Panel | 1 x PS.2 keyboard/mouse port 1 x DisplayPort 1 x HDMI Port 5 x USB 3.1 ports 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A 2 x RJ-45 LAN Port 1 x Optical S/PDIF out 5 x Audio Jacks |
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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.