Review: ASUS PRIME Z370-A motherboard

#5491492 Posted on: 11/12/2017 01:57 AM

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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

#5491559 Posted on: 11/12/2017 12:16 PM

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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 .

#5491580 Posted on: 11/12/2017 01:51 PM

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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

#5549864 Posted on: 05/24/2018 09:43 PM

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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.