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ASUS PRIME Z370-A review
Posted by: on: 11/10/2017 09:52 AM [
9 comment(s) ]
We review the new ASUS PRIME Z370-A motherboard. At a price of €195,- the new Prime is the new mainstream aware series, yet has that distinctive ASUS feel, and that can only mean good stuff. It has great looks and all the features you probably seek for a Z370 motherboard.
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SerotoNiN
Senior Member
Posts: 2817
Senior Member
Posts: 2817
Posted on: 11/10/2017 04:33 PM
Thanks for the review. I took a chance on this board on launch day and haven't been able to install/use it yet since the 8700k I ordered the same day continues to get pushed back by Amazon (I think they're gonna make me wait quite a while since I got it at original price). Good to see you liked it. Makes me more comfortable with it.
Thanks for the review. I took a chance on this board on launch day and haven't been able to install/use it yet since the 8700k I ordered the same day continues to get pushed back by Amazon (I think they're gonna make me wait quite a while since I got it at original price). Good to see you liked it. Makes me more comfortable with it.
Hilbert Hagedoorn
Don Vito Corleone
Posts: 34223
Don Vito Corleone
Posts: 34223
Posted on: 11/10/2017 05:06 PM
Yeah, Coffee Lake availability still is a drama. I'm in the same boat really. But you'll love the board 4 sure!
Yeah, Coffee Lake availability still is a drama. I'm in the same boat really. But you'll love the board 4 sure!
maddog55
Member
Posts: 40
Member
Posts: 40
Posted on: 11/11/2017 06:23 PM
Such a pity that the Asus Prime x370 AMD motherboard is a pile of crap!,nothing like this Intel quality board...
Sent mine back and ordered the Asus Strix x370 Gaming F.
Asus in their wisdom are not giving us the "Q" connector anymore, or shorting caps for the CMOS pins....really miss the q connector for easy & quick board removal
Such a pity that the Asus Prime x370 AMD motherboard is a pile of crap!,nothing like this Intel quality board...
Sent mine back and ordered the Asus Strix x370 Gaming F.
Asus in their wisdom are not giving us the "Q" connector anymore, or shorting caps for the CMOS pins....really miss the q connector for easy & quick board removal
Linkinworm
Junior Member
Posts: 3
Junior Member
Posts: 3
Posted on: 11/11/2017 09:19 PM
I own one of these and I have a couple issues with the review.
1: there's a bracket that should be installed on the cpu before you put the cpu in (why was this left out of everything including the photos?)
2: with a 960 evo nvme if you install the Samsung nvme driver you can reach 3200mb/s read, I hit 2800 with MS default drivers but it goes way higher
3: The rear IO bracket is a nightmare when installed in a case, it has tabs that can get pushed into the IO ports while installing and with the shroud its hard to see if they are in them or not.
4: I have my NVME drive in the lower slot and sata 4 5 are not disabled, in fact I have 2 drives in use in them. they only get disabled IF you use a m.2 drive in SATA mode, if its in PCIE the sata ports don't get disabled.
But overall, this is a pretty great budget board, I paired it with a 8700K and I got 5.2GHz average over all 6 cores (I had 2 cores stabled at 5.3Ghz while the rest were at 5.2) with pretty good temps on my h100 cooler, temps maxed out about 80C 100 load. at abuot the same voltages you guys used. I will say this the fan headers and software are... lacking. yes theres like 7 of them total, but 2 of them are for CPU, one for AIO pump and ones for a m.2 fan now you might think "ok whats the issue" well the issue is the UEFI doesn't treat these as it would fan1 and fan 2 (that's all you get really) instead it has predefined settings for how to run these fans, the AIO pump will run a fan faster than needed, and the CPU headers wont go below 50% without some messing around. would have been nice to get some fan splitters in the box rather than a sli bridge.
I own one of these and I have a couple issues with the review.
1: there's a bracket that should be installed on the cpu before you put the cpu in (why was this left out of everything including the photos?)
2: with a 960 evo nvme if you install the Samsung nvme driver you can reach 3200mb/s read, I hit 2800 with MS default drivers but it goes way higher
3: The rear IO bracket is a nightmare when installed in a case, it has tabs that can get pushed into the IO ports while installing and with the shroud its hard to see if they are in them or not.
4: I have my NVME drive in the lower slot and sata 4 5 are not disabled, in fact I have 2 drives in use in them. they only get disabled IF you use a m.2 drive in SATA mode, if its in PCIE the sata ports don't get disabled.
But overall, this is a pretty great budget board, I paired it with a 8700K and I got 5.2GHz average over all 6 cores (I had 2 cores stabled at 5.3Ghz while the rest were at 5.2) with pretty good temps on my h100 cooler, temps maxed out about 80C 100 load. at abuot the same voltages you guys used. I will say this the fan headers and software are... lacking. yes theres like 7 of them total, but 2 of them are for CPU, one for AIO pump and ones for a m.2 fan now you might think "ok whats the issue" well the issue is the UEFI doesn't treat these as it would fan1 and fan 2 (that's all you get really) instead it has predefined settings for how to run these fans, the AIO pump will run a fan faster than needed, and the CPU headers wont go below 50% without some messing around. would have been nice to get some fan splitters in the box rather than a sli bridge.
CrazY_Milojko
Senior Member
Posts: 1985
Senior Member
Posts: 1985
Posted on: 11/12/2017 12:57 AM
Great review and nice board!
Honestly I think this board is well worth those $/€200 you're talking about Hilbert. If I am in search for decent all around Z370 board paired with some 8700K this mobo would be my no.1 choice, no doubt about that. Of course like every other freshly released mobo there are some issues here and there in first BIOS versions but it'll be polished by Asus within a few weeks, few months at most. This mobo has everything I REALLY NEED minus that RGB LED mumbo jumbo I don't, but in this price range and up we can't chose it anymore: every €130 to 150€ and higher priced mobo has some LED raibow stuff attached, at least we a have choice to dim those LEDs or completely turn them off.
Just checked prices here expecting something around €250 mark but I was wrong: surprisingly it's around €200 so it's fine as I'm concerned. The only problem here is unavailability of 8700K, all those who claim they have it for sale actually they don't have them on stock but everything can be arranged by the same retailers with these words coming from their mouth: "...well, if you really want it... we could do something about it: add €100 (some of them even asked €150!) on the top of these €470 and it'll be here within few days..." GTFO I say!!! So no Intel for me this time after more than 10 years of mostly Intel builds next high end rig in our house is going to be AMD CPU based...
My previous plan to build 8core Ryzen rig for my older son somewere around August or September is on hold atm because my wallet has some other priorities. Fast DDR4 3000 and faster RAMs needed for Ryzen to spread its wings are insanely pricey here so it's another one reason for me to wait a bit more than planed. Guess if I wait a bit more Ryzen "refresh" will come and 4GHz+ freqs will be easy peasy for those + with less heat and less needed voltage. Since my first i7 920 C0 some 9 years ago and broken 4GHz barier now I have mental barier to build anything that could't OC to at least 4GHz with HT enabled lol
Great review and nice board!
Honestly I think this board is well worth those $/€200 you're talking about Hilbert. If I am in search for decent all around Z370 board paired with some 8700K this mobo would be my no.1 choice, no doubt about that. Of course like every other freshly released mobo there are some issues here and there in first BIOS versions but it'll be polished by Asus within a few weeks, few months at most. This mobo has everything I REALLY NEED minus that RGB LED mumbo jumbo I don't, but in this price range and up we can't chose it anymore: every €130 to 150€ and higher priced mobo has some LED raibow stuff attached, at least we a have choice to dim those LEDs or completely turn them off.
Just checked prices here expecting something around €250 mark but I was wrong: surprisingly it's around €200 so it's fine as I'm concerned. The only problem here is unavailability of 8700K, all those who claim they have it for sale actually they don't have them on stock but everything can be arranged by the same retailers with these words coming from their mouth: "...well, if you really want it... we could do something about it: add €100 (some of them even asked €150!) on the top of these €470 and it'll be here within few days..." GTFO I say!!! So no Intel for me this time after more than 10 years of mostly Intel builds next high end rig in our house is going to be AMD CPU based...
My previous plan to build 8core Ryzen rig for my older son somewere around August or September is on hold atm because my wallet has some other priorities. Fast DDR4 3000 and faster RAMs needed for Ryzen to spread its wings are insanely pricey here so it's another one reason for me to wait a bit more than planed. Guess if I wait a bit more Ryzen "refresh" will come and 4GHz+ freqs will be easy peasy for those + with less heat and less needed voltage. Since my first i7 920 C0 some 9 years ago and broken 4GHz barier now I have mental barier to build anything that could't OC to at least 4GHz with HT enabled lol
valentyn0
Senior Member
Posts: 104
Senior Member
Posts: 104
Posted on: 11/12/2017 11:16 AM
There's no point to buy this overpriced mobo, i bought the ASrock Z370 Pro 4 and it has more features for cheaper price (150 euro). for 200 euro this asus doesnt even have 8 sata ports !
Here, check the new Extreme 4 from Asrock as well, 8 sata ports, best performance in class comparable to 500 euro mobos .
There's no point to buy this overpriced mobo, i bought the ASrock Z370 Pro 4 and it has more features for cheaper price (150 euro). for 200 euro this asus doesnt even have 8 sata ports !
Here, check the new Extreme 4 from Asrock as well, 8 sata ports, best performance in class comparable to 500 euro mobos .
Linkinworm
Junior Member
Posts: 3
Junior Member
Posts: 3
Posted on: 11/12/2017 12:51 PM
There's no point to buy this overpriced mobo, i bought the ASrock Z370 Pro 4 and it has more features for cheaper price (150 euro). for 200 euro this asus doesnt even have 8 sata ports !
Here, check the new Extreme 4 from Asrock as well, 8 sata ports, best performance in class comparable to 500 euro mobos .
Have to disagree slightly here, it says 8 sata ports, but its actually 6 SATA and 2 m.2 in sata mode its not 8 dedicated sata ports
You also lose some features like the retention reinforcement for the pci slots, nothing major there but a gpus put a lot of stress on that poor pcie slot
You lose a Display port in favour of a vga port? honestly that's a mistake on several levels
1 less PCIe 4x
1 less usb 3.0 header
I think theres less fan headers? (but as I said before the AIO pump and the m.2 fan ones are useless for the most part on the prime a anyway)
From the looks of it, the asrock has less space between the DIMM slots and the CPU slot from a result of overall a slimmer board and squeezing components in, could be an issue with some coolers.
I could go on with the short comings of the asrock board, but my point is that yes its cheaper, but its cheaper because its made cheaper with less features, I didn't mention the RGB lighting because while that does add to the cost of the prime A its nothing note worthy for actual useful things adding to a boards cost
There's no point to buy this overpriced mobo, i bought the ASrock Z370 Pro 4 and it has more features for cheaper price (150 euro). for 200 euro this asus doesnt even have 8 sata ports !
Here, check the new Extreme 4 from Asrock as well, 8 sata ports, best performance in class comparable to 500 euro mobos .
Have to disagree slightly here, it says 8 sata ports, but its actually 6 SATA and 2 m.2 in sata mode its not 8 dedicated sata ports
You also lose some features like the retention reinforcement for the pci slots, nothing major there but a gpus put a lot of stress on that poor pcie slot
You lose a Display port in favour of a vga port? honestly that's a mistake on several levels
1 less PCIe 4x
1 less usb 3.0 header
I think theres less fan headers? (but as I said before the AIO pump and the m.2 fan ones are useless for the most part on the prime a anyway)
From the looks of it, the asrock has less space between the DIMM slots and the CPU slot from a result of overall a slimmer board and squeezing components in, could be an issue with some coolers.
I could go on with the short comings of the asrock board, but my point is that yes its cheaper, but its cheaper because its made cheaper with less features, I didn't mention the RGB lighting because while that does add to the cost of the prime A its nothing note worthy for actual useful things adding to a boards cost
ubercake
Senior Member
Posts: 212
Senior Member
Posts: 212
Posted on: 05/24/2018 08:43 PM
Aside from having all the features I need, one of my favorite things about this board is the on-board sound. It's among the best I've heard and includes a built-in headphone amp.
Aside from having all the features I need, one of my favorite things about this board is the on-board sound. It's among the best I've heard and includes a built-in headphone amp.
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Member
Posts: 28
Since you are not sure about the 199€ price you stated, the price in Portugal seems to be around 180€ in most stores.
I just ordered this MB to go with my i5 8600k and I paid 179€.