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 ESTFor the Z370 chipset, ASRock states they have an improved power phase design with “more power phases than ever” said to provide “unmatched overclocking capabilities, lower temperatures, and system stability”. ASRock boards also use their 'Hyper DDR4' nomenclature for improved memory performance, which according to their blurb indicates that the traces are optimized and memory circuitry isolated, providing pure clean memory signals 'for compatibility, stability, and performance' - also known as a revision of T-Topology. This allows some boards in the lineup to support speeds up to DDR4-4333. ASRock is one of the board partners offering 10 Gbps Ethernet via an onboard Aquantia controller port on the flagship Z370 Professional Gaming board. This is where we start.
ASRock Z370 Professional Gaming i7
The Fatal1ty Z370 Professional Gaming i7 looks like a high-end motherboard, with an extended shroud covering the rear panel and audio section, dual VRM heatsinks connected via a heatpipe, a trio of M.2 slots, and all full-length PCIe slots are strengthened in order to better support heavier video cards. There is some artwork on the board where the M.2 slots are located; otherwise, it is an all jet black with RGB LEDs peeking out through the shrouds and the bottom of the PCH heatsink. A debug LED and power/reset buttons are also found just below the chipset heatsink at the bottom of the board. Additional RGB LEDs can be added via the single RGB LED header.
A maximum of 64GB of memory through the four slots, with a supported speed up to DDR4-4333+. The DDR4-4333 rated speeds are the fastest listed from any manufacturer so far. The Pro Gaming i7 has a total of five PCIe slots: three full-length and two x1. All three full-length slots are reinforced, and work in x16 single, dual at x8, and all three at x8/x4/x4 modes. This lane configuration allows support for 2-way SLI and 3-way Crossfire. The x1 slots are ‘flexible’ in that the slot is open-ended, and larger cards are able to fit the slots if they only need x1 bandwidth.
Most Z370 motherboards have six SATA ports, while the Z370 Gaming i7 has eight. The other two ports are driven by an ASM1061 chipset which takes one PCIe from the chipset to provide two SATA ports. The board comes equipped with three M.2 slots, with two able to fit 110mm modules and the other supports 80mm drives. There is some lane sharing going on here, as the M2_1, SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 ports share lanes, as do the M2_2, SATA3_4, and SATA 3_5.
Audio duties are handled by a Realtek ALC1220 audio codec, which uses Nichicon Gold series audio caps as well as a NE5532 headset amplifier for the front panel (supports up to 600Ω headphones). Networking functionality can be handled by any of the four network solutions on the board: there are two Intel Gigabit LANs (an I219-V and I211-AT), and then there is the monster at the end in the Aquantia AQC107 controller supporting 10 Gbps for use with high bandwidth applications. Wireless networking is also included via the use of an Intel 802.11ac Wi-Fi module. It supports Bluetooth 4.2, is dual band, and allows wireless connection speeds up to 433Mbps, which suggests it is the AC3165.
There are three USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports in total, with two on the back panel (Type-A and Type-C) with the third Type-C an internal header for the front panel. There are four more USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports on the back panel with another two internal headers driven by an ASM1974 hub. Last, the Gaming i7 uses three USB 2.0 headers to support another six ports. The remainder of the back panel includes a clear CMOS button, a legacy PS/2 port, HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs, and audio jacks with SPDIF.
| ASRock Z370 Professional Gaming i7 | |
| 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 4333+ |
| Network Connectivity | 1 x Aquantia AQC107 10 GbE 1 x Intel I219-V GbE 1 x Intel I211-AT GbE Intel 802.11ac Wi-Fi Module w/BT 4.2 |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC1220 |
| PCIe (from CPU) | 3 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots @ x16, x8/x8, x8/x4/x4 |
| PCIe (from Chipset) | 2 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots |
| Onboard SATA | 6 x Chipset 2 x ASMedia ASM1061 |
| Onboard SATA Express | None |
| Onboard M.2 | 3 x PCIe 3.0 x4 - NVMe or SATA |
| Onboard U.2 | N/A |
| USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) | 1 x Type-C (ASMedia) 1 x Type-A (ASMedia) 1 x Internal Header |
| USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) | 4 x Rear Panel 2 x Header |
| USB 2.0 | 3 x Headers |
| Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin EATX 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V |
| Fan Headers | 1 x 4-pin CPU 1 x 4-pin Waterpump (1.5A/18W) 2 x 4-pin Chassis Fan 1 x Chassis Optiona/Water Pump (1.5A/18W) |
| IO Panel | 2 x Wi-Fi Antenna connectors 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port 1 x HDMI port 1 x DisplayPort 1.2 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port 1 x USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) Type-C 1 x USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) Type-A 4 x USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) Type-A ports 3 x LAN (RJ45) ports 1 x Clear CMOS button 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.