The NZXT N7 Z370 Motherboard Review: A New Player in the Motherboard Market
by Joe Shields on January 9, 2018 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- NZXT
- Coffee Lake
- i7-8700K
Benchmark Overview
For our testing, depending on the product, we attempt to tailor the presentation of our global benchmark suite down into what users who would buy this hardware might actually want to run. For CPUs, our full test suite is typically used to gather data and all the results are placed into Bench, our benchmark database for users that want to look at non-typical benchmarks or legacy data. For motherboards, we run our short form CPU tests, the gaming tests with half the GPUs of our processor suite, and our system benchmark tests which focus on non-typical and non-obvious performance metrics that are the focal point for specific groups of users.
The benchmarks fall into several areas:
Short Form CPU
Our short form testing script uses a straight run through of a mixture of known apps or workloads and requires about four hours. These are typically the CPU tests we run in our motherboard suite, to identify any performance anomalies.
| CPU Short Form Benchmarks | |
| Three Dimensional Particle Movement v2.1 (3DPM) | 3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, derived from my academic research years looking at particle movement parallelism. The coding for this tool was rough, but emulates the real world in being non-CompSci trained code for a scientific endeavor. The code is unoptimized, but the test uses OpenMP to move particles around a field using one of six 3D movement algorithms in turn, each of which is found in the academic literature. |
| The second version of this benchmark is similar to the first, however it has been re-written in VS2012 with one major difference: the code has been written to address the issue of false sharing. If data required by multiple threads, say four, is in the same cache line, the software cannot read the cache line once and split the data to each thread - instead it will read four times in a serial fashion. The new software splits the data to new cache lines so reads can be parallelized and stalls minimized. | |
| WinRAR 5.4 | WinRAR is a compression based software to reduce file size at the expense of CPU cycles. We use the version that has been a stable part of our benchmark database through 2015, and run the default settings on a 1.52GB directory containing over 2800 files representing a small website with around thirty half-minute videos. We take the average of several runs in this instance. |
| POV-Ray 3.7.1 b4 | POV-Ray is a common ray-tracing tool used to generate realistic looking scenes. We've used POV-Ray in its various guises over the years as a good benchmark for performance, as well as a tool on the march to ray-tracing limited immersive environments. We use the built-in multi threaded benchmark. |
| HandBrake v1.0.2 | HandBrake is a freeware video conversion tool. We use the tool in to process two different videos into x264 in an MP4 container - first a 'low quality' two-hour video at 640x388 resolution to x264, then a 'high quality' ten-minute video at 4320x3840, and finally the second video again but into HEVC. The low-quality video scales at lower performance hardware, whereas the buffers required for high-quality tests can stretch even the biggest processors. At current, this is a CPU only test. |
| 7-Zip 9.2 | 7-Zip is a freeware compression/decompression tool that is widely deployed across the world. We run the included benchmark tool using a 50MB library and take the average of a set of fixed-time results. |
| DigiCortex v1.20 | The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up. |
System Benchmarks
Our system benchmarks are designed to probe motherboard controller performance, particularly any additional USB controllers or the audio controller. As general platform tests we have DPC Latency measurements and system boot time, which can be difficult to optimize for on the board design and manufacturing level.
| System Benchmarks | |
| Power Consumption | One of the primary differences between different motherboads is power consumption. Aside from the base defaults that every motherboard needs, things like power delivery, controller choice, routing and firmware can all contribute to how much power a system can draw. This increases for features such as PLX chips and multi-gigabit ethernet. |
| Non-UEFI POST Time | The POST sequence of the motherboard becomes before loading the OS, and involves pre-testing of onboard controllers, the CPU, the DRAM and everything else to ensure base stability. The number of controllers, as well as firmware optimizations, affect the POST time a lot. We test the BIOS defaults as well as attempt a stripped POST. |
| Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.2.5 | Testing onboard audio is difficult, especially with the numerous amount of post-processing packages now being bundled with hardware. Nonetheless, manufacturers put time and effort into offering a 'cleaner' sound that is loud and of a high quality. RMAA, with version 6.2.5 (newer versions have issues), under the right settings can be used to test the signal-to-noise ratio, signal crossover, and harmonic distortion with noise. |
| USB Backup | USB ports can come from a variety of sources: chipsets, controllers or hubs. More often than not, the design of the traces can lead to direct impacts on USB performance as well as firmware level choices relating to signal integrity on the motherboard. |
| DPC Latency | Another element is deferred procedure call latency, or the ability to handle interrupt servicing. Depending on the motherboard firmware and controller selection, some motherboards handle these interrupts quicker than others. A poor result could lead to delays in performance, or for example with audio, a delayed request can manifest in distinct audible pauses, pops or clicks. |
Gaming
Our gaming benchmarks are designed to show any differences in performance when playing games.
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madalice - Friday, January 26, 2018 - link
There is plenty of scientific evidence that the best outcomes for transgender individuals come from affirmation and supportive medical interventions. See this blog post (https://genderanalysis.net/2018/01/evidence-of-hea... for a decent list of references on that topic. You may find that the expertise of participants in a forum focused on computer hardware and technology is of limited value in a discussion of gender identity.edzieba - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link
The whole paragraph could definitely have benefited from a preface of "we don't have any data for Z370 boards, so X299 is the closest comparison we have". Along with some explanation for where the numbers came from for the "different uncore" 8700ks: are they tested on another motherboard which varies the uncore frequency (that different motherboards do that AT ALL would be worthy of an article in and of itself)? Were they tested on the same board (different CPUs have different uncore frequencies even with the same designation, also worthy of an article), and if so why can't the N7's uncore not be changed for an apples-to-apples test? Are they numbers from the same CPU with the uncore overclocked on the N7 board (if so, why are the numbers everywhere /except/ the 'overclocking' page)?Tunrip - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link
Thank you for the response :) I think maybe you over-worried about what you could/couldn't tell people here quite early on. I appreciate your honest answers and will look forward to reading more of your articles :)viktorborge - Sunday, January 28, 2018 - link
If you tried to say that this is the first Z370 board you tested, and that you didn't have any other Z370 boards available, so you don't have anything to compare it to, why didn't you just write that? That paragraph sounds like what you write in a research paper when you want to hide some screwup behind jargon.You could have compared it to to the data from your initial review of the 8700K:
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11859/the-anandtech...
Yeah, yeah, different setup, but it still makes WAY more sense to do this than the i9.
Sailor23M - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link
Agree w/ Tunrip, threw me off as well.Slash3 - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link
I re-read it twice as I thought someone had accidentally pasted a paragraph from the conclusion page in the introduction page. I stopped asking myself questions when I got to the graphs containing undefined asterisks.Galcobar - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link
The whole article could have used a copy editor, unfortunately. It's replete with both fragmentary and run-on sentences, incomplete lines of thought, and flat-out missing explanations.Aside from the grammatical issues, the concerns commenters raised are typical of a piece written by someone who knows the subject matter. The author thus does not see the jumps from point to point which the reader for lack of background information cannot follow.
ApePriori - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link
Yeah, 'Coffe Lake' shows up twice, paragraph and header.:nudge> - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link
One of the most surprising and appealing things I've seen reviewed here in quite a while. I wasn't evening planning on buying a motherboard but am considering getting one. Considering it's their first MB, the price is to be expected. I don't mind the lack of usb3.1 and like the sacrifice of 2 Sata for better M2 support. I hope this clean (no gamer) look starts a trend.l8gravely - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link
The most annoying things about this board is the lack of colors on the audio block, making it more difficult to figure out what goes where. Especially whe it's in the case and around back. The second thing is the shrouds, I worry that the board will get hotter than expected, since air won't be able to flow around it as easily. Plus, when you do (you know you will!) drop a screw and it goes under a shroud, it's going to be a pain to get back out.I do like the lack of bling, but that's cause I'm a grumpy old man. Get off my lawn kids! I *never* look into my cases once they're setup, so not having that part is great.
Being a new vendor, with new BIOS and other features, I'd probably steer clear of this board unless the price was super good, just because the time I waste chasing down problems isn't worth it.
Can you do some long term stability tests? Maybe put it all into a case with crappy airflow and then let it crank doing some CPU stress tests for 48, 72 or more hours? With lots of IO and stressing of the PCIe busses?