Z370 - need help chosing

[Jestahr]

Hey guys,

Preordered my 8700k so hopefully that arrives in a few weeks. Been checking out mobos and getting confused with all there is available.

Firstly I see lots of Z370-A Z370-F etc, what exactly do these letters represent?

Secondly I haven't had to build a complete new build since sandy/ivy and I'm out of the loop on reliable brands. I noticed asrock seems way more popular these days and feature rich for the price.

Was looking to spend about £120 on a board as I don't need SLI and will only being doing modest overclocks if any. Any suggestions?


Regards

 

[orbitalwalsh]

Budget boards

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Asrock Z370 Pro4 Intel Z370 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £109.99
• 1 x MSI Z370-A Pro Intel Z370 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £109.99
• 1 x Gigabyte Z370-HD3 Intel Z370 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £124.99
• 2 x Asus Prime Z370-P Intel Z370 (Socket 1151) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £121.99

Total: £600.65
(includes shipping: £11.70)



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Picking up Gigabyte one for testing with i5 8400/8600k . Only problem is most of the early reviews were done on flagship or middle tier boards. Hoping these budget lower end boards could turn out like Ryzen B350 - cheap, run high end speeds unlike the pending B360 boards and keep costs down for 8400 or 8600k system .
Hopefully more users will post up their experiences with lower end boards. Amd b350 really turned things upside down showing you don't need an expensive board to do well, just a solid cheap board can match the best board as and chipset

 

[Aretak]

If you're a Steam user, the Gigabyte Aorus Gaming K3 is a step up in quality from the real entry level boards. And whilst it's priced at £137, you get £20 back in Steam wallet credit via the promotion they're running right now. Plus Gigabyte are the only motherboard company with UK-based RMA I believe, apart from EVGA who only make higher end boards (which aren't available yet anyway).

Other than that I'd consider the ASRock Killer SLI, which is less over budget. Again, for the upgrade in general quality, rather than the SLI bit. I wouldn't fancy running an 8700K on one of the really low end boards with tiny/no VRM heatsinks myself, but that's me.

/edit/ As for the letters, they're just company-specific product naming. They have no bearing on anything between manufacturers. They're just there to denote different models in a product stack. The Strix boards range in quality from H at the low end to E at the top for example.