The ASUS Z370-I Gaming Review: Mini-Me Mega Motherboard
by Joe Shields on May 21, 2018 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Mini ITX
- Asus
- Coffee Lake
- Z370
- Z370-I Gaming
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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37 Comments
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PeachNCream - Monday, May 21, 2018 - link
Benchmark consistency is important. The same components are used with the exception of the motherboard being reviewed so that the only variable that changes from one review to the next is the motherboard itself. Results can then be reliably compared with previous and future reviews and useful conclusions can be reached about the differences in performance.TerraEnvy - Wednesday, August 1, 2018 - link
Depends on the Case.My Mini-IX Build can in fact support many things.
I am running a gtx 1080 TI in my mini-ITX. So it really just depends on case design.
RVZ03B MINI-ITX Case is designed specifically for a gaming build and as such can fit many things in it, mind you its a tight fit, that many other cases can not handle, but is definitely possible to do these things if you look around enough.
jordanclock - Monday, May 21, 2018 - link
Or you get some water cooling and keep your mini ITX case without sacrificing thermal performance.1_rick - Monday, May 21, 2018 - link
"going the route of smaller Mini-Itx cases is necessary which means a restriction on size of cooler that can be used."I put a 240mm rad in a Mini-ITX case, cooling an overclocked Ryzen.
TEAMSWITCHER - Monday, May 21, 2018 - link
Agreed. A modern MicroATX case is only slightly bigger and eliminates all the compromises of the mini-itx form factor.StevoLincolnite - Monday, May 21, 2018 - link
Ambients usually exceed 50'C (122F) here at least once every summer. 40'C is a cake walk.My LGA2011+3930K rig is still going strong though, with the price of Ram and GPU's, I don't see the point in upgrading right now? The bang for buck just doesn't seem to be there.
808Hilo - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link
Quite the contrary my friend. The dissipation is as much as a bigger board. Its easier to cool because the fan stream in a mitx case is acting more like a heattube. Using a board as a heatsink is not such a great idea. My 240 Air is cooling a watercooled 1800x, 32GB Ram and 1080 very well in my hot climate.imaheadcase - Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - link
Huh? You can say that about any electronic equipment though..Samus - Thursday, May 24, 2018 - link
This comment is ridiculous. Cooling compromises? That is entirely dependent on the case, not the motherboard.Most of the chips used in this board, even overclocked, will never exceed 100w power draw. If you were commenting on an x299 ITX platform I'd half agree with you because the compromises are vast, but for Z370?
I'm still running an Asrock H87M-ITX on a severely overclocked i5-4690K (4.6GHz) on water cooling with a 120x40mm radiator in a Silverstone FT03-Mini, not to mention the GTX970 with a blower. System pulls over 400w under load (2xHDD's and an SSD don't help) and the overall footprint is just over ONE cubic foot. Never had any cooling issues.
bolkhov - Monday, May 21, 2018 - link
"is one of two boards of its size which have two M.2 slots (GIGABYTE Z370N WiFi is the other)" --Joe, doesn't Supermicro C7Z370-CG-IW have two M.2s in a similar configuration (on both sides of PCB)?