Final Words & Conclusion
Conclusion
This all new Z370 motherboard behaved like a Hero with the 0402 BIOS at hand. The performance is good, but really all Z370 board perform toughly within the same 2% margin of error with an exception here and there. That goes for overclocking and tweaking as well of course, the denominator here is the processor and not so much the motherboard. Overclocking wise we reach roughly 5.1 GHz on all six cores 100% stable on our sample. you'll likely see some samples hit 5.3 and others 5.0, but it is along these ranger. The platform (Z370/Coffee Lake) also manages heat and power consumption at very acceptable levels.
Performance & tweaking
Once tweaked we noticed that the six cores like a bit of extra voltage, we expect all-core tweaks in the 5.1~5.2 GHz marker to need 1.35~1.39 Volts on the processor. While that does increase power consumption, it wasn't something that scared me away. Some platforms will and procs will also be able to manage a lower voltage. On this board temps at such voltages / frequency ranges reached 75 Degrees C for 5.1 GHz. We did use an ES sample, perhaps the final retail product can do with a little less juice. If you plan a tweak at that 5 GHz marker then remember my remarks on cooling, you will need LCS, that or a very good heatpipe cooler. Again, we have been using an ES sample so I cannot say anything conclusive on the final retail products (these might run a tiny bit cooler). The infrastructure that Z370 offers is easy to use, you increase the CPU voltage and multiplier and you are good to go. Another plus for the Intel platform is that over the years they have been able to refine their memory controllers, pop in anything XMP 2.0 and you have a 90% change it'll work straight out of the box with very fast memories. Mind you that all our tests are performed at 3200 MHz DDR4, similar to Ryzen and Threadripper to remain objective and for fair play on both sides.
Power consumption
Z370 with a six cores and twelve threaded proc equals to a 95 Watt TDP processor. With the system at idle with a GeForce GTX 1080 installed / 16 GB memory / SSD and the Z370 motherboard. Typically you will hover at roughly 50 Watts in IDLE. The board is within the baseline of the rest of the tested Z370 motherboards. When we stressed the processor 100% run we reach roughly 150 Watts with the 6-core 8700K part overall. When we game we hover at ~250 Watts with the GeForce GTX 1080, but obviously that factor is dependent on the type of graphics card you use of course and sure, most games certainly do not utilize the six CPU cores. Overall I have no worries here.
DDR4 Memory
For Coffee Lake (8th Gen Intel procs) DDR4 may be clocked a notch faster at 2400/2667 MHz as per Intel reference. We always say, volume matters more than frequency. A 3200 MHz kit for example is far more expensive and does offer better bandwidth but the performance increases in real-world usage will be hard to find. Unless you transcode videos over the processor a lot. As always, my advice would be to go with lower clocked DDR4 memory with decent timings, but get more of it. Don't go for 8 GB, get four DIMMs and in total a minimum of 16 GB. The reason we test at 3200 MHz is simple, we do the same for AMD Ryzen and want to create a fair and equal playing ground for both. We however have added a 3866 MHz kit as a bit of extra to show how easy it is to get closer to that 4 GHz DDR4 domain (not that such a high frequency is really relevant but it is fun to see the bandwidth scores). The G.Skill memory wasn't supported in the initial BIOS we tried, but booted totally fine with an XMP at 3866 CL18 once we tried BIOS revision 0402.
Final words
If you are an ROG kinda guy, then it'll be hard to not like the new Maximus X Hero. Asus did keep things a little dim and hasn't gone extreme with a gazillion M2 ports and Ethernet options. Then again like honestly, two M2 slots are fine right? I mean who really is gonna use more than two or even one? Mind you that using two comes at the cost of SATA connector ports. The Z370 Maximus X Hero certainly is a nice looking products, the board kicks in nicely with exactly the right amount of RGB LEDs, and once activated it's just a completely different board to look at. The LEDs give the product really nice looks. All RGB configurable of course as well. I have no final confirmation on pricing, yet expect it to sit at or in the 199~249 USD bracket, which would be alright. lacking is WIFI neither does it come with a preferred a 5G or 10G LAN Jack. Connectivity wise in terms of your PCIe slots for your graphics subsystem you are looking at a full x16 Gen 3 lanes for one graphics cards. The second and PCIe slot shares it's lanes with the first one, ergo you'd end up at configuration like x8/x8. The third x16 slot, in fact is a x4 slot which draws its lanes from the chipset. We expect Coffee lake to be able to manage the 5 GHz domain on all cores with exceptions running up towards 5.2 GHz (all-core). I base this metric on high-perf aircoolers and liquid cooling. From there on-wards you are looking at proc ASIC quality and cooling being the more important denominator. Concluding, I am not 1005 sure about pricing just yet but if right and it is on that 200 SUD marker, then the Maximus X Hero motherboard offers enough features, has a lovely design and would be a very nice mate for your Coffee Lake processor. Recommended by Guru3D.com
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