Trying to decide on a Z370 motherboard up to £150

King Mustard

King Mustard

King Mustard

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I am going to buy an Intel Core i7-8700K.

I currently have an Intel Core i7-6700K @ 4.5 GHz (using a standard 240mm liquid cooler), which is only a modest overclock, and I intend to do an equally modest overclock on the i7-8700K. Just something light.

It turns out there are a lot of Z370 motherboards up to £150!

I've made the following table:

sauus4.png


Any suggestions? Or perhaps extra column or two I can add, to differentiate between them all?
 
personally, i would discount anything without the latest audio codec (1220)
and out of those not discounted, i'd go with the giga gaming k3
 
and also discount boards without usb 3.1
we're in 2018, not 2015.

also i'd personally only consider boards with an intel nic, as nice as killer nics are, intel nics 'just work' and its throughput is the best, if not one of the best.
too many horror stories of driver issues with killer nics, unless you specifically need a feature, i'd probably just stay away from them

also, rgb or no rgb? :P
 
tamzzy said:
and also discount boards without usb 3.1
we're in 2018, not 2015.

also i'd personally only consider boards with an intel nic, as nice as killer nics are, intel nics 'just work' and its throughput is the best, if not one of the best.
too many horror stories of driver issues with killer nics, unless you specifically need a feature, i'd probably just stay away from them

also, rgb or no rgb? :p
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Done!

So now I just need to find the difference between these :P

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Since you highlighted the x8 PCIe - are you thinking about going SLI in the future? If so, you can elimiate 2 more.
also, what other PCIe cards are you likely to add? GPU and Soundcard only? If so, then number of PCIe slots is not too relevant (ie. no sense paying extra for something you won't use)

How many USB sockets do you need (of the 3.0 variety). The Prime has 2 on the back, the Aorus K3 & Krait Gaming have 4 on the back, while the other two have 6.
 
oh wow, i didnt realise that the gaming k3 didnt support sli.
i think i'd have to revise my recommendation and go for the krait =x
 
Steviepunk said:
Since you highlighted the x8 PCIe - are you thinking about going SLI in the future? If so, you can elimiate 2 more.
also, what other PCIe cards are you likely to add? GPU and Soundcard only? If so, then number of PCIe slots is not too relevant (ie. no sense paying extra for something you won't use)

How many USB sockets do you need (of the 3.0 variety). The Prime has 2 on the back, the Aorus K3 & Krait Gaming have 4 on the back, while the other two have 6.
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This is true!

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The MSI Z370 Krait Gaming seems the best of my choices on paper.
 
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I recently had the same choice between the MSI and Gigabyte K3, and came to the conclusion that the MSI was the better board overall but ended up going for the Gigabyte due to my last board dying from a bad BIOS flash and the backup BIOS just swung it for me. I went for the K3 over the regular 3 because it had an Intel NIC instead of Killer. The board itself seems fine, I can't get my 8600k over 4.8ghz in it but I think that's more down to the chip being a bit of a lemon rather than any fault of the motherboard, also the VRMs get a bit toasty if you really push it with Prime95 but they're totally fine with any other usage.
 
Doop! said:
I recently had the same choice between the MSI and Gigabyte K3, and came to the conclusion that the MSI was the better board overall but ended up going for the Gigabyte due to my last board dying from a bad BIOS flash and the backup BIOS just swung it for me. I went for the K3 over the regular 3 because it had an Intel NIC instead of Killer. The board itself seems fine, I can't get my 8600k over 4.8ghz in it but I think that's more down to the chip being a bit of a lemon rather than any fault of the motherboard, also the VRMs get a bit toasty if you really push it with Prime95 but they're totally fine with any other usage.
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I have K3 :) vrm are fine for gaming (sorry build for a friend not mine ) , also fine when doing quick cad work . If doing serious CPU rendering 24/7 then yeah, would switch to Aorus or ROG .

You'll find there's strong rep presence on here and their Mobo is UK RMA

Set the LLC to Turbo ? Might help swing it a bit , 4.9ghz
 
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Asus prime or k3 in this short list. Although asrock mentioned earlier at an extra 3 quid us really a very good board too. Especially in clock for clock efficiency and OC.
 
orbitalwalsh said:
Set the LLC to Turbo ? Might help swing it a bit , 4.9ghz
Click to expand...

My LLC is on Turbo it needs about 1.33v to get to 4.8, even at 1.4v it won't run at any higher speeds. I'm happy enough at 4.8ghz it's just a bit disappointing when I'm reading all these claims online about chips doing 5ghz at 1.2v :p Sorry, don't want to hijack the thread!
 
@Doop!
Naughty habit with my with Asus and Gigabyte boards, using 'their' Pre Set Overclock Profiles and see if it can manage 5ghz.
Yes it pumps very high levels of voltage but makes it quick to find the limit and then do some proper manual overclocking of failing down the voltage .
 
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