ASUS ROG STRIX B360-I Gaming Motherboard Review @ [H]

[FrgMstr]

ASUS ROG STRIX B360-I Gaming Motherboard Review

It seems there is a new mini-ITX motherboard model every time you turn around. We’ve often looked at the higher end of the spectrum on these little power houses. This time we switch gears and look at a more budget oriented option than we are used to, how does this $128 motherboard hold up to to it more expensive brethren?

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[RAmable]

Nice review. Thanks for it.

Small error on listing that both type 2280 slots are PCIe and SATA on the first page in the Storage Interfaces cell.

 

[ReaperX22]

I'm finding the budget-ish Asus boards match their top-tier brethren a lot. Especially true in the ITX version of the AMD board, B450i vs X470i. Because of the lack of available PCIe lanes etc, it basically makes zero difference for a (AUD) 70 dollar difference.

I was considering this board and an i5 8400 as a set and forget replacement to my sig... Still tossing up between this (ultimately cheaper) and the b450i + 2600(or x).

Great review. Love the look of these boards too!

 

[Supercharged_Z06]

Great review - especially nice option for folks that aren't all that interested in OCing. (Which I suspect is probably only a small set of folks here on the [H].) I'm hoping you have the chance to review some of the higher tier ROG boards as well soon... and compare/contrast their overall performance for those of us considering a 9X00K upgrade soon... especially as to OC perfromance. I'm especially interested in the new ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula which offers a built-in water block for cooling the board itself. Would love to see if that extra cooling brings anything to the table as to performance and/or extra OC capability or if it's just there for marketing.

 

[Chimpee]

Nice review, it is nice to see some features from higher end boards trickle down to lower end boards, a bit shame rams couldn't go higher than 2666mhz. With support for 9000 series, throw in a 9700K or 9600K and you get a pretty mean HTPC or SFF build.

 

[KOOLTIME]

As said, not every occasion needs to be OC. I was looking for not wallet breaking good mobo in small form factor. I need a small stable gaming system just for the kids to use but a nice playable system that would do well for most gamers. This one looks just right for the need.

Since you tested it well, no issues noted, seems like a good solid mini, not to expensive extra game rig for family to use.

Mucho thanks on the great review, cheers

 

[/dev/null]

It works in .5 increments, so you get 1.30v, 1.35, and 1.40v and so on

I think you meant the voltage steps were by .05 not by .5... Just missing a zero there Otherwise, great review!

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Wow, the similarity in chipset naming to AMD's previous gen really confused me when approaching this article.

 

[looniam]

. In this case, none of my Corsair modules behaved and the system wouldn’t even post with most of the kits I’ve got. I ended up using the Team Group T-Force TUF Gaming Alliance Vulkan RAM which did work properly, but couldn’t clock past DDR4 2666MHz on my test bench. Most of my modules are getting long in the tooth and memory compatibility is somewhat fickle on today’s platforms so I’m not going to blame the motherboard too much for this. Needless to say, I’d check the QVL for this motherboard before making a purchase of any RAM.

you know that QVL is loaded with corsair RAM? it's a shame since i seen the XMP and training options in the bios screen shots.

i was excited for this board but seeing that, until asus sorts it out, i will be looking elsewhere.

 

[limitedaccess]

I know it doesn't let you increase memory speed but did you try playing around and instead see how low the timings could possibly go?

No memory beyond 2666 is still why I'm still hesitant to go with a non Z board even with no OCing the CPU but I'm wondering how much timings could possibly make up for it. If only they'd at least let you go to 3200 to pair with those cheap (for now) Hynix 3200CL16 2x8GB kits.

 

[Doc Doc]

Great review - especially nice option for folks that aren't all that interested in OCing. (Which I suspect is probably only a small set of folks here on the [H].) I'm hoping you have the chance to review some of the higher tier ROG boards as well soon... and compare/contrast their overall performance for those of us considering a 9X00K upgrade soon... especially as to OC perfromance. I'm especially interested in the new ASUS ROG Maximus XI Formula which offers a built-in water block for cooling the board itself. Would love to see if that extra cooling brings anything to the table as to performance and/or extra OC capability or if it's just there for marketing.

i was all - "that sounds interesting" - and it was, especially the price - $450! I guess they wanted to match prices with Intel and nVidia

 

[NoxTek]

... There are also two M.2 ports, one of which supports PCIe and SATA type devices while the other is SATA only. There is no RAID support on the ROG STRIX B360-I Gaming, so we can’t provide numbers for that and there isn’t anything else to really talk about on that front. Optane is still supported for people who want that.

You guys got this backwards. In actuality both M.2 ports support PCIE x4 - not just one. (That's how come you can put Optane on port 2) However port 2 doesn't support SATA mode.
Also I believe you can do RAID on the regular SATA ports - just not on the M.2 ports. I found that out the hard way today trying for an hour to get my two Samsung 960 EVO NVME setup in RAID0.

Given the above - I can't figure out why RAID on the m.2 SSDs in PCIE mode isn't supported. It seems to be purely an artificial software / UEFI limitation.