Totally upgrading to this from my ASRock H87M-ITX, which has held solid for 4 years with an over locked i5-4670k.
The main appeal isn’t just that coffee lake is finally a worthy upgrade from previous generations, especially Haswell, but that platforms simply lacked PCIe m.2 until recently and that’s where the performance gain will be most noticeable. Going from 500MB/sec SSD to 2800MB/sec is huge. And with 12 thread CPU’s to back it up I can’t wait to unrar 8GB 1080p videos in 3 seconds.
Do you still have this motherboard? I have this board and, for the life of me, I can't figure out what that white 8-pin header does next to two of the SATA ports.
Thought mine was weird, but even your sample has it--most mysteriously, none of ASRock's other Z370 motherboards have it nor the ASRock Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac!
Isn't space a premium in mini-ITX boards? Why would you leave an extra 8-pin header on such a board? It barely fits anyways between the SATA ports and the front panel I/O header.
Oh, right: I love this motherboard. Absolutely fantastic: excellent list of full-fat features, runs cool (def. disabled MCE, though), excellent RAM overclocking support, proper 2x2 WiFi, BIOS is complete and full-featured, ASRock updated expeditiously for Spectre/Meltdown (big kudos from me as software support starts to differentiate these commodity products), simple layout, no real gotchas (except the TB3 is only wired as PCIe 2x instead of 4x--but who is honestly driving eGPUs or wild iGPU-heavy docks from a gaming mini-ITX motherboard?!), and the built-in RGB is fun to play with (and syncs nicely with proper lighting).
The most minor of cons which some random dude/dudette just has to have, but should be noted for completeness: TB3 is 2x lanes, no USB 3.1 header (though ITX case support is even worse), RGB header is the standard 4-pin and not the fancy RGBW 5-pin, single M.2 slot (but, if you deeply care, you can bifurcate the PCIe x16 and add a $20 PCIe M.2 slot adapter), and the WiFi antenna could be better (a million replacements on Amazon, though, and fine to keep the price down).
No mention of the onboard Thunderbolt 3 controller being the lesser 20Gb/s, single-port version? This a sponsored review or just a place to get shitty, misleading reviews?
Ask the same question to all the retards whining about 4-lane thunderbolt shit in laptops. Most of them will never even own a single TB3 peripheral, never mind one that would actually require 40Gb/s of bandwidth.
Anandtech has taught us that "USB 3.1" is meaningless unless "Gen 1" or "Gen 2" is specified. Yet this article uses the term 7 times without clarification.
Apparently it's left to the author's discretion and Joe, unlike as far as I can tell every other writer on Anandtech, does not follow the USB Implementers Forum convention laid down in 2013.
Must have been a fluke. My Z97 Extreme 6 is over 4 years old and is still rock solid. I have built 3 or 4 systems using Z97 Extreme 4's for friends, all still running never a problem. I had a Asrock micro ATX board I gave to a friend years ago, can't remember the model (Intel Core 2 vintage) that's still running to this day. Knock on wood. So you were just unlucky IMHO.
One board does not represent an entire company. One RMA process issue does not as well.
No company in the history of companies has had a 100% production rate. When doing large end user deployments in the past we considered anything with a DOA rate under 3% to be wonderful. That's 3 dead laptops, desktops, etc per 100. Worst one was Toshiba with a DOA rate of 8% on a 1000 laptop deployment. Ew. Anyway you have to step back and look at it from a much wider angle.
ASRock has been solid for me over the years. I have no complaints. Rocking a 5 year old rig with one right now and know plenty of people who have had no issues. I know they are not perfect.....nobody is.
To get x299 on a mini itx board and keep the quad channel RAM they had to shift to SODIMMs, unless you're putting the RAM on the backside of the board I can't see how they could do a quad channel TR board..
Just stick with microATX and add TB via a PCIe card!
I have this board, everything about it is excellent except the 1.5v DDR voltage limit. My B-Die G.Skill 3200 Mhz RAM has a lot more in it than 3866/CL15. If you reading, ASRock, please give us more to play with.
I'm not that bullish on this Z370 board - not that there's anything wrong with it, but: - Its Summer 2018 and Z390 boards are being announced all around. - The Z370 gives up a lot of IO vs the H370, just to gain overclocking. - The Z390 will have overclocking AND better IO, like 6x 2nd gen USB 3.1 - 8-core i7-9700K ships are imminent. maybe 8 cores without multi-threading won't be better than 6 cores with multi-threading - but do you want to put down your chips without knowing? - Nvidia's 1180 GPUs are also imminent if the Siggraph announcement is a good enough hint for you.
Seems better to me, to just wait a couple of months
No z390 and NV 2080 .. z370m-itx/ac here, gives up the tb3 and some other stuff? for a lot less cash, good going so far , but wheres asrock overclocking software? has it vanished ...
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stanleyipkiss - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
Best buy for any situation right here. Amazing Z370 board.Samus - Saturday, July 14, 2018 - link
Totally upgrading to this from my ASRock H87M-ITX, which has held solid for 4 years with an over locked i5-4670k.The main appeal isn’t just that coffee lake is finally a worthy upgrade from previous generations, especially Haswell, but that platforms simply lacked PCIe m.2 until recently and that’s where the performance gain will be most noticeable. Going from 500MB/sec SSD to 2800MB/sec is huge. And with 12 thread CPU’s to back it up I can’t wait to unrar 8GB 1080p videos in 3 seconds.
n13L5 - Sunday, August 5, 2018 - link
Really? With Cocaine Lake 8-cores and Z390 boards imminent?foxen - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
minor typo: in the visual inspection when you list the I/O on the back panel, you miss the GigE nic.Gunbuster - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
Warning to prospective buyers. Today's date is 7/13/2018. Check out the driver and software page for this board. Nearly everything is from 2017.You will not get timely support from ASRock.
ikjadoon - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
Do you still have this motherboard? I have this board and, for the life of me, I can't figure out what that white 8-pin header does next to two of the SATA ports.https://i.imgur.com/aBTTB07.png (it's missing even in the motherboard manual!)
Thought mine was weird, but even your sample has it--most mysteriously, none of ASRock's other Z370 motherboards have it nor the ASRock Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac!
Isn't space a premium in mini-ITX boards? Why would you leave an extra 8-pin header on such a board? It barely fits anyways between the SATA ports and the front panel I/O header.
ikjadoon - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
Oh, right: I love this motherboard. Absolutely fantastic: excellent list of full-fat features, runs cool (def. disabled MCE, though), excellent RAM overclocking support, proper 2x2 WiFi, BIOS is complete and full-featured, ASRock updated expeditiously for Spectre/Meltdown (big kudos from me as software support starts to differentiate these commodity products), simple layout, no real gotchas (except the TB3 is only wired as PCIe 2x instead of 4x--but who is honestly driving eGPUs or wild iGPU-heavy docks from a gaming mini-ITX motherboard?!), and the built-in RGB is fun to play with (and syncs nicely with proper lighting).The most minor of cons which some random dude/dudette just has to have, but should be noted for completeness: TB3 is 2x lanes, no USB 3.1 header (though ITX case support is even worse), RGB header is the standard 4-pin and not the fancy RGBW 5-pin, single M.2 slot (but, if you deeply care, you can bifurcate the PCIe x16 and add a $20 PCIe M.2 slot adapter), and the WiFi antenna could be better (a million replacements on Amazon, though, and fine to keep the price down).
esoterikos13 - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
I have the same board and I have no clue either! LMAOAnandIdiots - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
No mention of the onboard Thunderbolt 3 controller being the lesser 20Gb/s, single-port version? This a sponsored review or just a place to get shitty, misleading reviews?mkaibear - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
Doesn't it hang off the DMI3 anyway? So it shares 4xPCIe 3.0 bandwidth with every other I/O on the board except the graphics card?As in, roughly 32Gb/s for everything?
Why would they put a 40Gbs port on it when even in the absolute best case scenario they'd not be able to use it?
timecop1818 - Saturday, July 14, 2018 - link
Ask the same question to all the retards whining about 4-lane thunderbolt shit in laptops. Most of them will never even own a single TB3 peripheral, never mind one that would actually require 40Gb/s of bandwidth.The_Assimilator - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
Would've been nice if they'd rotated the two SATA ports closest to the CPU socket by 180 degrees, so that you can unclip latching SATA cables.The_Assimilator - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
Also could've done with a few more USB 3.0 ports on the back panel.vortexmak - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
Kudos to ASRock and their plethora of features.However, it is missing a USB 3.1 header, those should be standard now.
Also, I don't know if an M.2 slot on the back is a good idea , since M.2 drives seem to require heatsinks
Mr Perfect - Wednesday, July 18, 2018 - link
There is a USB3 header between the DIMM slots and the two SATA ports, lower left hand corner.CharonPDX - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
Does the BIOS support enabling SGX? Is this motherboard capable of playing UHD Blu-ray?If so, this is the perfect small-form-factor motherboard.
Galcobar - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
If you're going to copy-paste a paragraph into every Intel motherboard review, maybe make sure it's not one with a typo:Page one, section Information on Intel's Coffee-Lake CPU Desktop Processors
"... Cutress reviewed a couple of processors (i7-8700K and i7-8400) ..." -- i5-8400.
"... cross compatible ..." -- cross-compatible.
Joe Shields - Monday, July 16, 2018 - link
Thanks for the critical eye. This has (finally) been updated. :)OFelix - Friday, July 13, 2018 - link
@Editor:Anandtech has taught us that "USB 3.1" is meaningless unless "Gen 1" or "Gen 2" is specified.
Yet this article uses the term 7 times without clarification.
Galcobar - Saturday, July 14, 2018 - link
Apparently it's left to the author's discretion and Joe, unlike as far as I can tell every other writer on Anandtech, does not follow the USB Implementers Forum convention laid down in 2013.I grumped about this on the last motherboard review, and received this response from Joe: https://www.anandtech.com/comments/12656/gigabyte-...
hansmuff - Saturday, July 14, 2018 - link
Could you please tell me which program you use to check DPC latency? Thank you kindly!Joe Shields - Monday, July 16, 2018 - link
LatencyMon - http://www.resplendence.com/latencymonVanguarde - Saturday, July 14, 2018 - link
If this is typical ASrock quality, the board will fail twice in one year like my previous board did, with a nightmare RMA process.Will never do business with ASrock again. Sticking with the adults at Asus.
dubyadubya - Saturday, July 14, 2018 - link
Must have been a fluke. My Z97 Extreme 6 is over 4 years old and is still rock solid. I have built 3 or 4 systems using Z97 Extreme 4's for friends, all still running never a problem. I had a Asrock micro ATX board I gave to a friend years ago, can't remember the model (Intel Core 2 vintage) that's still running to this day. Knock on wood. So you were just unlucky IMHO.Holliday75 - Monday, July 16, 2018 - link
One board does not represent an entire company. One RMA process issue does not as well.No company in the history of companies has had a 100% production rate. When doing large end user deployments in the past we considered anything with a DOA rate under 3% to be wonderful. That's 3 dead laptops, desktops, etc per 100. Worst one was Toshiba with a DOA rate of 8% on a 1000 laptop deployment. Ew. Anyway you have to step back and look at it from a much wider angle.
ASRock has been solid for me over the years. I have no complaints. Rocking a 5 year old rig with one right now and know plenty of people who have had no issues. I know they are not perfect.....nobody is.
gehex1 - Saturday, July 14, 2018 - link
for all your cooperate espionage and monitoring, locate dating scams and do deep background check. d a r k w e b s o l u t i o n s . codeepRED.tv - Sunday, July 15, 2018 - link
Ok, almost perfect. Now a mini itx threadripper board with thunderbolt.Only, when hell frezes over right?
mkaibear - Monday, July 16, 2018 - link
Are you mad, man???Threadripper is an *enormous* socket;
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/asrock-x399m-taic...
That's it on a mATX board...
To get x299 on a mini itx board and keep the quad channel RAM they had to shift to SODIMMs, unless you're putting the RAM on the backside of the board I can't see how they could do a quad channel TR board..
Just stick with microATX and add TB via a PCIe card!
f18ccx - Monday, July 16, 2018 - link
I have this board, everything about it is excellent except the 1.5v DDR voltage limit. My B-Die G.Skill 3200 Mhz RAM has a lot more in it than 3866/CL15. If you reading, ASRock, please give us more to play with.Dug - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Why is Non-UEFI POST Time used?Is there a way to find out fastest boot time?
n13L5 - Sunday, August 5, 2018 - link
I'm not that bullish on this Z370 board - not that there's anything wrong with it, but:- Its Summer 2018 and Z390 boards are being announced all around.
- The Z370 gives up a lot of IO vs the H370, just to gain overclocking.
- The Z390 will have overclocking AND better IO, like 6x 2nd gen USB 3.1
- 8-core i7-9700K ships are imminent. maybe 8 cores without multi-threading won't be better than 6 cores with multi-threading - but do you want to put down your chips without knowing?
- Nvidia's 1180 GPUs are also imminent if the Siggraph announcement is a good enough hint for you.
Seems better to me, to just wait a couple of months
dromoxen - Wednesday, September 19, 2018 - link
No z390 and NV 2080 .. z370m-itx/ac here, gives up the tb3 and some other stuff? for a lot less cash, good going so far , but wheres asrock overclocking software? has it vanished ...