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-ITX/ac and Z370 Gaming-ITX/ac
The last two ASRock boards left in their current Z370 lineup are the Z370M-ITX/ac and the Z370 Gaming-ITX/ac. While their pedigree is a bit different, with the latter coming from the Gaming line, they are both mini-ITX sized boards intended to fit in small form factor cases. Due to the size, neither SLI nor Crossfire support is possible due to only one PCIe slot in place, but the idea for this size is to have a small powerhouse. The Gaming-ITX/ac will have more or higher-end features and will come in at a higher price point out of the two, because it also has an onboard Thunderbolt 3 chip.
The Gaming-ITX board, as all mITX sized boards seem to, look pretty cramped as there is very little free space on the board. This board uses a heatpipe to connect the power delivery heatsink to the chipset heatsink, with the Thunderbolt controller also taking advantage. Only the Gaming-ITX has a reinforced PCIe slot at the bottom of the board, which is rated to PCIe 3.0 x16 from the processor. As far as overall looks, there isn’t really a theme so much as it is a black PCB with a lot going on in a small space. The board does have red LEDs on the bottom by the PCIe slot and does and an RGB header for adding additional flare.
The Z370M-ITX also doesn’t have much in the way of beautification going either. On this board all six of its power delivery phases have a heatsink, but it is noticeably smaller than the one in the Gaming-ITX and is not connected via a heatpipe to the chipset heatsink (which is also slimmed down). Due to the smaller chipset heatsink, the M.2 slot on the Z370M-ITX is located on the front of the board, just above the non-reinforced PCIe slot, rather on the rear.
Memory capacity is limited to one module per channel, due to having two slots instead of four because of the size. Similar to the other ASRock boards, the quoted speeds for these two boards are higher than the other vendors, with the Gaming version supporting DDR4-4333 and the standard Z370M-ITX going for DDR4-4000. Interestingly for the PCIe slot, the Gaming-ITX/ac specifications does mention support for PCIe riser cards to extend one x16 slot to two x8 slots, should users have access to an appropriate riser card. That being said, the system does not ship with SLI certification, and thus support may be limited to Crossfire in this scenario.
Both boards have a single PCIe 3.0 x4 based M.2 slot, with the Z370M-ITX having it on the front and the Z370 Gaming-ITX on the rear. Despite some of the larger boards from other vendors having only four SATA ports, ASRock goes for all six on both of the mini-ITX boards, and placed such that interlocking cables should not interfere with each other if drives need to be removed.
For fan headers, they each have three, with ASRock's 'CPU Optional/Water Pump' fan header able to output 1.5A/18W. Both of them also have Wi-Fi modules, although the one in the Gaming uses the Intel AC8265 while the Z370M-ITX uses the AC3165. The boards differ in audio, with Gaming-ITX/ac using the Realtek ALC1220 and adding all the bells and whistles from the Gaming line (Nichicon Gold Series audio caps, T.I NE5532 headset amplifier), compared to the Z370M-ITX which uses a Realtek ALC892. The boards also differ on networking in favor of the Z370M-ITX which has dual Intel (I219-V, I211-AT) whereas the Gaming-ITX only has one (I219-V).
The key difference in the support between the two boards is going to be the Thunderbolt 3 port on the Gaming-ITX. This port supports video outputs and USB 3.1. Other USB support on the back panel of the Gaming-ITX/ac is provided by the six USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports. Elsewhere on the panel is a combination PS/2 port, a clear CMOS button, the antenna connectors, HDMI video output, DisplayPort video output, the ethernet connection, the audio jacks, and SPDIF.
For the Z370M-ITX/ac, there is no Thunderbolt port, but in its place are two HDMI ports. This comes with the DisplayPort to round out the video outputs. USB connectivity comes from two USB 2.0 ports and six USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports. The two network ports look fairly ominous, but are paired with the Wi-Fi module just next door. The audio supplies three jacks, with no SPDIF here.
| ASRock Z370 Gaming-ITX/ac and Z370M-ITX/ac | ||
| Z370 Gaming ITX/ac | Z370M-ITX/ac | |
| Warranty Period | 3 Years | |
| Product Page | Link | Link |
| Price | Amazon US | Amazon US |
| Size | ATX | |
| CPU Interface | LGA1151 | |
| Chipset | Intel Z370 Express | |
| Memory Slots (DDR4) | Two DDR4 Supporting 32GB Dual Channel |
|
| Support DDR4-4333 | Support DDR4-4000 | |
| Network Connectivity | 1 x Intel I219-V Intel AC8265 Wi-Fi |
1 x Intel I219-V 1 x Intel I211-AT Intel AC3165 Wi-Fi |
| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC1220 | Realtek ALC892 |
| PCIe from CPU | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slot | |
| PCIe from Chipset | None | |
| Onboard SATA | 6 x Supporting RAID 0/1/5/10 | |
| Onboard SATA Express | None | |
| Onboard M.2 | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 |
| Onboard U.2 | None | |
| USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) | 1 x Type-C (via Thunderbolt) | None |
| USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) | 6 x Back Panel 1 x Header |
|
| USB 2.0 | 1 x Header | |
| Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin EATX 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V |
|
| Fan Headers | 1 x 4-pin CPU (1A/12W) 1 x 4-pin CPU Opt (1.5A/18W) 1 x 4-pin Chassis Fan |
|
| IO Panel | 2 x Antenna ports 1 x Combo PS/2 1 x HDMI port 1 x DisplayPort 1.2 1 x Intel TB3 (Type-C) 1 x Optical SPDIF out 6 x USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) 1 x RJ-45 LAN port 1 x Clear CMOS button 6 x Audio Jacks |
2 x Antenna ports 1 x Combo PS/2 2 x HDMI ports 1 x DisplayPort 1.2 2 x USB 2.0 ports 6 x USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports 2 x RJ-45 LAN ports 3 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.