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 Plus
The Z370 Gaming Plus fits in the lower end of the MSI Z370 Gaming lineup by taking away a few key items on the other boards. Notably, the only LEDs are the board are located on the back of the board and the audio separation line; they are also only red rather than full RGB. The theme is pretty specific, being black and red, so the red LEDs do match the aesthetic. Other notable changes include full-length PCIe slot count reduced to 2, as well as the VRM section trimming a few phases. For the most part, that only excludes users who wish to run three PCIe coprocessors. Regardless of the changes, it is still a well-appointed board.
The Gaming Plus is a standout aesthetically due to its permanent black and red design. A wave of thin red lines penetrate their way through the bottom third of the board through the PCI slots and up through the VRM heatsinks, looking like a laser show, but in red only. Additionally, the memory slots alternate black and red with both full-length PCIe slots donned in red. The Gaming Plus does have one RGB LED connector in case users want to add more red, or a bit more color to their case.
The board uses four memory slots with double sided clips, supporting 64GB at maximum capacity with speeds up to DDR4-4000. The Gaming Plus has two full-length PCIe slots, with the primary slot reinforced and running a full PCIe 3.0 x16 from the processor. The second full-length slot, in red, supports x4 connectivity from the chipset, along with four black PCIe x1 slots also on the board.
The board has the normal complement of six SATA ports. Four of the ports are oriented horizontal, while the other two directly next to them are vertical to the board. Other storage options include one M.2 slot fitting up to a 110mm module, and it supports both PCIe and SSD based devices. The board is wired so that SATA1 port is disabled when an M.2 SATA SSD is installed.
Users will find six 4-pin fan headers located throughout the board. Like its family up the product stack, hybrid PWM and Voltage control functionality is retained on the Gaming Pro. Audio functionality is handled by the last generation ALC892 codec, likely in an effort to save a few dollars. Network capabilities are handled through a single Intel I219-V Gigabit LAN controller and bandwidth management software.
In another cost-saving effort, the Gaming Pro is without USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) support. Four USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Type-A ports are found on the back panel, while four others are available through internal USB connectors. Additionally, there are six USB 2.0 ports with two Type-A located on the back panel and four more via internal connectors. Outside of the USB connectivity, the back panel IO consists of a combination PS/2 port, a trio of video outputs (DVI, D-Sub, and DisplayPort), the Intel network port, and the audio stack.
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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.