ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming Motherboard Review @ [H]

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ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming Motherboard Review

ASUS dominates the mini-ITX market with its various "I" series motherboards. It proved that going to a smaller form factor didn’t mean compromising on performance, only expandability. Even then, ASUS has mitigated a lot of those limitations as well. Does the ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming motherboard live up to its predecessors.
 
  • Two NVMe /M.2 slots supporting Raid, Wow! On a miniITX which is really ideal
  • 8 USB ports on back - Nice
  • It has more power phases for the CPU as far as I can tell then any other miniITX Z370
  • OC/Performance looks to be flawless
  • dual band Wifi, Bluetooth, quality audio . . .
Only negative or pet peeve for this form factor is one chassis fan, with great OCing ability it would be nice having more of those.

I am hoping ASUS carries this over to the X470/B470 miniITX line in the near future. Another very good review, only thing
not in the review I would be interested in, especially in this form factor are thermals of the VRM and board in general.​
 
I am looking to upgrade my 2015 Asrock X99E-ITX/ac i7-5960x Titan Xp system but am hesitant with the current CPU's not being fixed.
This mb sounds right up my alley.
 
So yeah, about a high-end MVNe M.2 SSD on a Asus ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming ... tl/dr: it runs hot!

That MVNe SSD is screaming fast, like nothing else I have ever had in game-pc at home.
A benchmark doesn't say a whole lot, but the whole system just feels snappier then the old i7 7700K Intel MVNe U.2 (M.2 wirth a cable) 400GB.

screen_shot_2018-02-08_at_10-27-14-png.53636


I currently have a Samsung 960 Pro 1TB installed on the front M.2 slot of my Asus ROG Strix Z370-I Gaming which is in a DAN A4-SFX v2 case, my i7 8700K is cooled by a Asetek 545LC, so the only fan in my system is the one on the radiator of the latter (and yes, also a fan in my Corsair SF600 PSU).

The other night I was playing Quake Champions while recording my gameplay via nVidia Shadowplay and downloading Destiny in the background. Both plexi-glass sidepanels were installed.

When I finally quit Quake Champions my system felt very slow and didn't seem to register any input from mouse or keyboard. After a few seconds Quake Champions quit, and I could see my desktop. I immediately thought there was something wrong with the temperatures of either my CPU or GPU. HWMonitor showed the temperatures of the GPU as somewhere around 80°C, well within the margin of 91°C for a GTX1080Ti. The non-delidded i7 8700K was something around 70°C, very happy with the Asetek 545LC.

But then I took a look at the temperature of the Samsung 960 Pro, it showed as 91°! Reading the internet there is no official information about thermal throtteling for a Samsung SSD, but test show that it begins to lower performance at around 75°C.

I rebooted the system and the UEFI bios displayed a message like "consider replacing HDD". I left the system off for a couple of minutes, and it booted just fine afterwards.

This makes me believe those heatsinks in the Asus ROG Strix Z370-I Gaming are there for a reason. But because of the watercooling there is no airflow around the heatsinks of the SSD.

So, I'll need to add a fan to blow fresh outside air around the heatsinks of the motherboard.
Currently have this as solution until I find a more final solution:

img_0631-jpg.53638


With the Noctua Fan blowing air on the heatsinks of the SSD, the temperatures now never exceed 40°C. This is after a SSD stresstest of about an hour.

ssd-png.53639
 
So yeah, about a high-end MVNe M.2 SSD on a Asus ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming ... tl/dr: it runs hot!

That MVNe SSD is screaming fast, like nothing else I have ever had in game-pc at home.
A benchmark doesn't say a whole lot, but the whole system just feels snappier then the old i7 7700K Intel MVNe U.2 (M.2 wirth a cable) 400GB.

screen_shot_2018-02-08_at_10-27-14-png.53636


I currently have a Samsung 960 Pro 1TB installed on the front M.2 slot of my Asus ROG Strix Z370-I Gaming which is in a DAN A4-SFX v2 case, my i7 8700K is cooled by a Asetek 545LC, so the only fan in my system is the one on the radiator of the latter (and yes, also a fan in my Corsair SF600 PSU).

The other night I was playing Quake Champions while recording my gameplay via nVidia Shadowplay and downloading Destiny in the background. Both plexi-glass sidepanels were installed.

When I finally quit Quake Champions my system felt very slow and didn't seem to register any input from mouse or keyboard. After a few seconds Quake Champions quit, and I could see my desktop. I immediately thought there was something wrong with the temperatures of either my CPU or GPU. HWMonitor showed the temperatures of the GPU as somewhere around 80°C, well within the margin of 91°C for a GTX1080Ti. The non-delidded i7 8700K was something around 70°C, very happy with the Asetek 545LC.

But then I took a look at the temperature of the Samsung 960 Pro, it showed as 91°! Reading the internet there is no official information about thermal throtteling for a Samsung SSD, but test show that it begins to lower performance at around 75°C.

I rebooted the system and the UEFI bios displayed a message like "consider replacing HDD". I left the system off for a couple of minutes, and it booted just fine afterwards.

This makes me believe those heatsinks in the Asus ROG Strix Z370-I Gaming are there for a reason. But because of the watercooling there is no airflow around the heatsinks of the SSD.

So, I'll need to add a fan to blow fresh outside air around the heatsinks of the motherboard.
Currently have this as solution until I find a more final solution:

img_0631-jpg.53638


With the Noctua Fan blowing air on the heatsinks of the SSD, the temperatures now never exceed 40°C. This is after a SSD stresstest of about an hour.

ssd-png.53639

Temperatures for SFX is so critical for getting the performance out of the hardware and can be darn right hard to achieve. Looks like you were able get things cool.
 
I bought Asus Z370-G Gaming Strix which is a bit bigger. But I swear I will never again buy Asus motherboard.

I used to hold them in high regard but it was about 4 years since I last time owned Asus motherboard.
The new motherboard had all type of issues. Unable to flash/too complicated. Asus provides a file but you can't use it because you need to use some app to convert it to a working file type. And that app is bugged and I couldn't get it to work.
Also, WIFI driver keeps dropping and the WIFI driver Asus provides is wrong and doesn't work.
I had to extract WIFI driver from Windows update so I can update Windows (I had neither LAN or WIFI working). After that WIFI worked until suddenly the driver disappeared. I was unable to get it working again and now I just have a fucking cable across the rum.

Man, fuck Asus motherboards.
 
I have another experience ... Before installing an OS on my SSD, I plugged in a network cable, and booted in the UEFI bios of this motherboard. After enabling the network stack in the UEFI bios and reboot I was able to download and install the most recent BIOS update directly from Asus's website.
 
Not sure why u2 with m2 dongles or "drivebays" isn't a thing yet, would be a lot easier to design boards around (and simple to go up to 3 or 4 off Z370) and you can rgb heatsink bling up m2 stuff which they seem to love. A pair of m2 2280 would readily fit inside a 2.5" drive-sized carrier with plenty of room left over for the rgb sync cable (lol). Its kinda odd because there are plenty of cheap m2 to u2 boards (electrically compatible) hell there are even m2 to x4 pcie on breakout boards.

The fastest drives are u2 anyways, performance has a power and thermal cost that exceeds m2's laptop design origins.

Of all the vendors I would expect asus or asrock to do it first, "RGBpimp edition itx with 4 way nvme raid!!!!1111" or whatever.
 
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Why is XMP such a step daughter nowadays with Asus ?

My 3600 still wont fire up, 3200 is max :(
 
Kyle,

yes it is, it's the Corsair 3600-CL16-16-16-36 (red) edition. Now they are marked as 16-17-(17)-36 and have an "R" at the end of their item number, R for RED I guess.

It's not only me having such issues, our flight forum has a few more members with ( mainly Asus ) new Z370 and RAM problems, mainly XMP wont work.


I had this same RAM 4-ship config in my Z270 where it wasnt in the QVL and they worked, took a few Bios updates to run via XMP but I was always able to dial in the numbers myself, accept a (much) longer boot time ( time to post ), but they worked.

With this new Z370 I kept the RAM as it is a 32GB kit and gave my Z270/7700k to my son, along with a new pair of Gskill 16GB-3600-CL16-16-16-36. They worked in the Z270 without any issue, XMP and done. The price of RAM held me back to buy another

new 32GB kit for me, also my son doesnt need 32GB, he has no use for them. Thats why I kept them.

I can dial in what I want, go as slow as 19-19-etc.. 1.45v....nothing helps. I get all sorts of error messages,IntelME-FW


Asus Forum Guru said this to QVL: It only states that we had 1 pair of those listed RAM kits in 1 board and they worked, that is all.

QVL makes sense for servers and adapter cards. Desktop boards should not follow this trail. it just makes one not want to buy again = bad experience.

I may have some understanding, others dont, they say " The box says it runs RAM till 4133, says XMP too, now my RAM is 3866 + XMP and it wont even boot"

How do we please such guys ? Not with a QVL answer, you loose a customer in the long run.

Don't advertise what you cannot hold comes to my mind.
 
The ITX AM4 board Asus just launched has, like, no USB ports on it.

I believe that board is crying out to be bent over the test bench taking it [H]ard.
 
Kyle,

yes it is, it's the Corsair 3600-CL16-16-16-36 (red) edition. Now they are marked as 16-17-(17)-36 and have an "R" at the end of their item number, R for RED I guess.

It's not only me having such issues, our flight forum has a few more members with ( mainly Asus ) new Z370 and RAM problems, mainly XMP wont work.


I had this same RAM 4-ship config in my Z270 where it wasnt in the QVL and they worked, took a few Bios updates to run via XMP but I was always able to dial in the numbers myself, accept a (much) longer boot time ( time to post ), but they worked.

With this new Z370 I kept the RAM as it is a 32GB kit and gave my Z270/7700k to my son, along with a new pair of Gskill 16GB-3600-CL16-16-16-36. They worked in the Z270 without any issue, XMP and done. The price of RAM held me back to buy another

new 32GB kit for me, also my son doesnt need 32GB, he has no use for them. Thats why I kept them.

I can dial in what I want, go as slow as 19-19-etc.. 1.45v....nothing helps. I get all sorts of error messages,IntelME-FW


Asus Forum Guru said this to QVL: It only states that we had 1 pair of those listed RAM kits in 1 board and they worked, that is all.

QVL makes sense for servers and adapter cards. Desktop boards should not follow this trail. it just makes one not want to buy again = bad experience.

I may have some understanding, others dont, they say " The box says it runs RAM till 4133, says XMP too, now my RAM is 3866 + XMP and it wont even boot"

How do we please such guys ? Not with a QVL answer, you loose a customer in the long run.

Don't advertise what you cannot hold comes to my mind.
Yea, don't know what to tell you about that. I have really not had any issues at all with rated RAM on ASUS Intel boards, so I don't know what to tell you, expect, that sucks.
 
Me neither, never had any RAM issues on any Asus board since - I don’t know - 1998?
 
I have 4x8 Gskill 3600C16-16-16 on the hero z370 using XMP, no problems. These are a pair of 2x8 kits too, were on "sale".

But yes, QVL has never been much of a guarantee, it just means they tested a handful (or one) sample and it worked. Everything past jedec is technically a crapshoot.

FWIW I avoid corsair lately, they have little or no samsung chips and constantly change what they use behind every little revision number, probably whatever spot is cheap the day they order them. They have been coasting on "easy intel" compatibility for awhile, ryzen being more picky has shined a light on them.
 
I have 4x8 Gskill 3600C16-16-16 on the hero z370 using XMP, no problems. These are a pair of 2x8 kits too, were on "sale".

But yes, QVL has never been much of a guarantee, it just means they tested a handful (or one) sample and it worked. Everything past jedec is technically a crapshoot.

FWIW I avoid corsair lately, they have little or no samsung chips and constantly change what they use behind every little revision number, probably whatever spot is cheap the day they order them. They have been coasting on "easy intel" compatibility for awhile, ryzen being more picky has shined a light on them.
It's by far not the first board that makes trouble

At least in my case, Typhoon says it's a Samsung B-die.

This was my last Corsair kit, my son already got a 16GB-3600/CL16 kit from Gskill. No more Corsair anywhere tbh, not even the case. Done with that company, relabel, reprint, re-something, but no real value beyond glimmer in many "cases", stee as thin as can be etc..
 
Man, I can't believe I didn't post again in this thread!

So, my barely week old board is now up for sale in the FS/T forum... I'll get to why in a minute, but first my experience with the board:

I've been using the Z370-I Gaming for a little over a week and it's been fantastic. My 8700k is a bit of a problem child with a dunce cap, but I managed to get it to 5ghz at a somewhat high 1.42v. This chip really doesn't want to go beyond 5ghz either. But once I got my voltages and LLC dialed in the thing has been rock solid at 5ghz! I couldn't be more pleased, and if I wanted to stay with an ITX form factor this would be the board I would do it in. SO much stuff crammed into this little guy. I'm still amazed they fit 2x M.2 NVME slots, and yes - my twin 250GB 960 EVOs run blisteringly fast in RAID0. :D

upload_2018-4-5_12-40-34.png

So why do I want to get rid of it? Well... the above kinda tells the story. I've got this board sitting in a Thermaltake Core V21 case. The svelte little ITX board takes up a tiny corner of the case... so I want to 'sidegrade' to the bigger brother of the ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming, the Z370-G Gaming. It's basically the mATX version of the same board.

The original plan was going to be to move my rig into a new Thermaltake Core V1 'Snow Edition' which is an ITX case perfect for the ITX board, but then I discovered that my GTX 1080 Strix is too damn long to fit in the case..... so.... uhh... we're staying in the Core v21. My life is a comedy for someone.
 
Last edited:
Man, I can't believe I didn't post again in this thread!

So, my barely week old board is now up for sale in the FS/T forum... I'll get to why in a minute, but first my experience with the board:

I've been using the Z370-I Gaming for a little over a week and it's been fantastic. My 8700k is a bit of a problem child with a dunce cap, but I managed to get it to 5ghz at a somewhat high 1.42v. This chip really doesn't want to go beyond 5ghz either. But once I got my voltages and LLC dialed in the thing has been rock solid at 5ghz! I couldn't be more pleased, and if I wanted to stay with an ITX form factor this would be the board I would do it in. SO much stuff crammed into this little guy. I'm still amazed they fit 2x M.2 NVME slots, and yes - my twin 250GB 960 EVOs run blisteringly fast in RAID0. :D

How hot did the 960 EVO on the back of the motherboard get? If you noticed.
 
4 month later and the Bios' got even worse with RAM support imo. The last 3 Bios' are giving me BSOD's at 3200, regardless of XMP downscaled to 3200 from 3600 or manual or Auto. Anything above 3000MHz triggers BSOD's
with ever changing reasons. I am down to 3000MHz at 16-16-16-36-2T ( XMP values for 3600 ) and pray it will someday get fixed, as it got fixed with the Asus Z270.

If I only use 2 modules XMP-3600 works flawless out of the box, in all slots, all modules, just not more than 2 sticks at any time or it will go nuts. 2modules also overclock real nice, just my sim really needs more than 16GB of RAM, so taking 2 sticks out
died when i got my new airplane, FA-18, and it instantly grabbed 15GB RAM and my pageFile went 20GB....oops better 32GB at 3000 or even 2666 than 16GB at 3600 in that case.


If I knew that another specific board would accept the RAM I'd change the board, that's cheaper than a new 32GB kit at 3600 !
 
Yikes.. Try LLC level 5 then start clocking away. I hit 5Ghz on my chips at 1.35 for the worst stress tests and 1.3 for gaming. Even so, this board is really good. I don't run a constant 5Ghz - I like my chips loaded to be below 60C.


Man, I can't believe I didn't post again in this thread!

So, my barely week old board is now up for sale in the FS/T forum... I'll get to why in a minute, but first my experience with the board:

I've been using the Z370-I Gaming for a little over a week and it's been fantastic. My 8700k is a bit of a problem child with a dunce cap, but I managed to get it to 5ghz at a somewhat high 1.42v. This chip really doesn't want to go beyond 5ghz either. But once I got my voltages and LLC dialed in the thing has been rock solid at 5ghz! I couldn't be more pleased, and if I wanted to stay with an ITX form factor this would be the board I would do it in. SO much stuff crammed into this little guy. I'm still amazed they fit 2x M.2 NVME slots, and yes - my twin 250GB 960 EVOs run blisteringly fast in RAID0. :D

View attachment 64605

So why do I want to get rid of it? Well... the above kinda tells the story. I've got this board sitting in a Thermaltake Core V21 case. The svelte little ITX board takes up a tiny corner of the case... so I want to 'sidegrade' to the bigger brother of the ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming, the Z370-G Gaming. It's basically the mATX version of the same board.

The original plan was going to be to move my rig into a new Thermaltake Core V1 'Snow Edition' which is an ITX case perfect for the ITX board, but then I discovered that my GTX 1080 Strix is too damn long to fit in the case..... so.... uhh... we're staying in the Core v21. My life is a comedy for someone.
 
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4 month later and the Bios' got even worse with RAM support imo. The last 3 Bios' are giving me BSOD's at 3200, regardless of XMP downscaled to 3200 from 3600 or manual or Auto. Anything above 3000MHz triggers BSOD's
with ever changing reasons. I am down to 3000MHz at 16-16-16-36-2T ( XMP values for 3600 ) and pray it will someday get fixed, as it got fixed with the Asus Z270.

If I only use 2 modules XMP-3600 works flawless out of the box, in all slots, all modules, just not more than 2 sticks at any time or it will go nuts. 2modules also overclock real nice, just my sim really needs more than 16GB of RAM, so taking 2 sticks out
died when i got my new airplane, FA-18, and it instantly grabbed 15GB RAM and my pageFile went 20GB....oops better 32GB at 3000 or even 2666 than 16GB at 3600 in that case.


If I knew that another specific board would accept the RAM I'd change the board, that's cheaper than a new 32GB kit at 3600 !

Isn't there a Z370-E thread where you can post this? There can't even be 4 modules on a Z370-I.
 
Singe, I use rear m.2 in an ncase m1. I'll have to take a look at temps but its not that bad honestly. Quite cool.
 
Yikes.. Try LLC level 5 then start clocking away. I hit 5Ghz on my chips at 1.35 for the worst stress tests and 1.3 for gaming. Even so, this board is really good. I don't run a constant 5Ghz - I like my chips loaded to be below 60C.

My overclock is not the problem, I can run manual voltage at 1.27v for anything but AVX and 1.30v with AVX loads like newest prime95. With 1.35v manual I can do 5.2 and still not hit the temp limiter. No, oc is no problem. The problem remains the 4 modules.

I run LLC-6 since I went manual Voltage a month ago. I used to do 2 only for 5G, but 5.2 needs LLC-6 to pass AVX.
 
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