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 ESTMSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon and Pro Carbon AC
Sliding down the MSI product stack, the next board is the Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon (offered with and without Wi-Fi depending on the region). While it is still a fully featured board, and sits above almost all of MSI's product stack, it is the smaller sibling to the Godlike Gaming, but will be much cheaper as a result.
The Gaming Pro Carbon AC is based on an all-black PCB using all black slots and ports. It is less flamboyant than the Godlike Gaming with gray stenciling on the board around the socket area and uncovered audio section, as well as the chipset area, but the PCH heatsink is redesigned and has a carbon fiber middle with the MSI name above the integrated RGB LED underneath. The audio separation line, the back panel shroud, and below the ATX 24-pin are where the RGB LEDs hide. Additional RGB headers can be found on the bottom portion of the board and all can be controlled by the Mystic Light App. Two of the three PCIe slots are reinforced, while all of the DIMM slots use the Steel Armor.
Four memory slots on the ATX board give capacity support up to 64GB, with speeds up to DDR4-4000. All the memory slots are reinforced, and use single sided latches, which can make it easier to remove the modules in the presence of a large graphics card but require extra care when putting them in. There are a total of three full-length PCIe slots, two of which are fortified with MSI's Steel Slot. These two are powered by the CPU and run at x16/x0 and x8/x8. The third PCIe slot runs at x4 and gets its lanes from the chipset. The board supports 2-Way SLI from NVIDIA and 3-Way Crossfire from AMD. Lastly, the three x1 slots on the board also fed from the chipset and are sprinkled between the full-length slots.
The board has six SATA ports, four of these are at a 90° angle in the ‘normal’ location, while two others are vertical on the bottom right-hand portion of the board. For the two M.2 slots, the first M.2 slot is located above the first PCIe slot and supports 110mm drives with an included heatsink, while the second M.2 slot sits between the last two full-length slots and will support up to an 80mm drive. There are a total of six four-pin fan connectors on the board, one for the CPU, another for a water pump, and the last four are system fan headers. Audio is handled by an EMI shielded Realtek ALC1220 codec which uses Chemicon audio capacitors. Gone is the monopoly of Killer NICs from the Godlike Gaming, replaced by a lone Intel I219-V gigabit ethernet controller. There is still Wi-Fi on the AC model via a bundled PCIe card, which uses an Intel AC8265 controller.
The USB connectivity starts with the ASMedia 3142 chipset powering a USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) Type-C port and a Type-A port both on the back panel. The chipset handles eight USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports in total, with four on the back panel and four more available through internal USB connectors. Last, there are six more USB 2.0 ports with two on the back panel and four more via internal USB connectors. Video outputs for the integrated graphics are in the form of a DisplayPort and a HDMI port. There is a combination PS/2 connector as well as a gold plated audio stack with a SPDIF output to complete the back panel IO.
The Gaming Pro Carbon AC is a well-rounded board with plenty of features and connectivity and gives enthusiasts a good option at the high-end without going all-out like the Godlike Gaming. If wireless connectivity isn't a necessity, the Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon (non AC) is available and does not come with the PCIe wireless card.
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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.