Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unboxed now it's been six months since intel released their eighth gen core series so we're probably ready to move on to a new series that will use the same socket but it won't be backwards compatible actually no wait that is wrong today we're finally testing out some budget motherboards for existing 8th gen core series processors budget motherboards that don't support any kind of overclocking and ever less we're super excited to test them out because we were waiting for these or what seems like forever just quickly for those of you who are subscribed to the channel and have been missing some of our content YouTube recently changed the way things work and some people had the little bail thing the little bail notification D selected so if you are subscribed and you want to be notified of new content when it becomes available hit the bell and that should put you off the chance fingers crossed anyway that said thanks for watching and supporting our work now it's time to get back to the topic at hand normally with intel or AMD for that matter release a new mainstream desktop processor series they do so with a slew of new chipsets for example the 7th gen core series codenamed kb lake hit the ground running with 5 supporting chipsets and three of them you're probably quite familiar with as another example AMD also released rising with three desktop chipsets the a320 be 350 and X 370 but when Intel raced out the 8th gen core series codenamed coffee like last year they did so with just a single chipset the high-end expensive Zed 370 version this meant up until today the cheapest Intel 300 series motherboard you get your hands on cost around 110 dollars u.s. now today some six months since the initial release Intel's finally ready to unleash their more budget-friendly chipsets which includes the B 360 I also have some H 370 boards on hand but we're focusing on this slightly more affordable B 360 boards today so when compared to the Z 370 boards we already have what's missing from these cheaper B 360 boards well for starters B 360 boards don't supports CPU or memory overclocking even with an unlocked K processor this means auto overclocking features such as multi-core enhancement don't exist either they also don't support raid configurations they offer fewer PCIe lanes to the CPU less USB ports though the B 360 chipset does introduce native USB 3.1 gen2 ports something the said 370 chipset lacks entirely then finally whereas the said 370 boards can support up to three m2 ports the B 360 boards are limited to a single port as I noted earlier the B 360 chipset doesn't support ddr4 memory overclocking and as such is limited to the maximum frequency supported by the integrated memory controller this means the core i7 and core i5 models can run it up to ddr4 2666 while the core i3 models are limited to ddr4 2400 B 360 boards do support XMP but if you were to use modules with a ddr4 3000 profile for example then when you loaded that profile it would only load the timings associated with that profile and then set the memory to 20 666 or 2,400 depending on the CPU used MSI has kindly provided us with two of their newbie 360 models for testing and they say that through their own internal testing they've seen no difference in performance between B 360 and Zi 370 motherboards when testing out of the same conditions of course they are basing this claim on testing done with their most high-end model the gaming Pro carbon using the core i7 8700 K I personally though was interested in testing more affordable models so I requested the B 360 gaming plus and the dinky little B 360 m Pro VD which forgoes verum cooling entirely now if you missed my last video where I looked into the core i7 8700 performance using the Intel Box cooler it might be worth going back and watching that video first I'll provide a link in the video description but in short leading up to the release of these budget 300 series chipsets there were concerns that these six core parts wouldn't be able to deliver the same level of performance on this more affordable motherboards when compared to what we were seeing on these said 370 models MSI though is confident this isn't the case with their most premium the gaming Pro carbon a 210 Australian dollar motherboard but what about the more affordable 175 dollar B 360 gaming plus that's 175 dollars Aussie for those wondering well let's take a look by comparing this new B 360 motherboard to the MSI z3 70 god-like using the core i7 8700 and Core i5 8400 and for those of you unaware the godlike is an $800 AUD motherboard right so first up here's a look at the memory bandwidth performance and as you can see all test configurations were able to use ddr4 2666 memory as we're testing Core i5 and core i7 processors here of course there's ed 370 board can utilize highest spec memory with these processors but let's not worry about that for now as you can see the memory bandwidth is exactly the same using either these ed 370 or B 360 board moving on here at the center bench r15 multi-threaded scores and starting with the core i5 8400 we say that it delivers the same score on both boards using the Box cooler and also note this CPU is no faster using an aftermarket cooler though I should also note this is when testing in a room with an ambient air temperature of 21 degrees it's a different story though with the core i7 8700 using the Box cooler we see these same performance on both the B 360 and z3 70 boards however if we install a tower style cooler the score is increased by 5% as 8,700 goes from an all-call turbo frequency of 4.1 gigahertz to 4.3 yoghurts and this is because thermal throttling is no longer an issue this performance uplift is being demonstrated on the B 360 board but it's the exact same story when testing with the Zed 370 model using the corona benchmark we see similar performance with both the 8,400 and 8700 using either chipset again it's the same story when testing with poverty we see with a better cool the render time was reduced by a 2% margin with the core i7 8700 more of the same is seen when testing with blender so I'm going to wrap up the application testing here and check out a few games here we see when playing battlefield 1 that the experience is the same on the B 360 board as it is on the Zed 370 please note we are looking exclusively at the 1% low frame time performance which has been converted to an FPS metric similar results were found when testing with Far Cry 5 the difference between the two motherboards can be chalked up to the margin of error this though is an interesting result the feature rich is at 370 godlike is significantly more power hungry than the B 360 gaming plus total system consumption for the core i5 8400 was reduced by 25% with the B 360 board while the 8700 saw a 13% reduction in consumption so it seems these cheaper motherboards are going to help improve the performance per watt rating of these locked intel 6 core CPUs okay so the MSI B 360 gaming plus had no trouble matching an extreme Zed 370 mother was locked coffee-like CPUs of course both boards were limited to ddr4 2666 memory naturally the Zed 370 board will pull away in certain workloads and games when paired with higher frequency memory and well that's really a given as I said earlier though MSI suggests that the B 360 gaming plus will retail for 175 dollars Australian and that places it just below the cheaper said 370 boards on the market as an example Emma sighs owned a Z 370 gaming Plus cost just $200 and for the price of a cheap meal you get quite a few extras not least of which is CPU and memory overclocking so ideally be 360 shoppers will want to spend less I have to admit that I might have over achieved here as I convinced MSI to hand over their be 360m Pro VD which they say will come in at a hundred and fifteen dollars Australian though that is the suggested price and it will likely cost less than that at least I really hope it will right now for the same money you can get the MSI B 250m Mordor and that's a significantly higher quality motherboard so realistically I'm thinking more like eighty to ninety Australian dollars and probably 60 to 70 dollars u.s. we'll just have to wait and see though we're pricing heads over the next few weeks anyway what I can tell you is that the b-36 TM pro vd is a super super basic motherboard and is the most affordable model MSI will be offering in the be 360 range besides the basic chipset features nothing extra has been added to this tiny micro ATX board there's just two dimm slots no verum cooling of any kind and no HDMI or DisplayPort connectivity there are none of those natively supported USB 3.1 gen2 ports included just the six gen one ports along with half a dozen USB 2.0 ports MSI has them including m2 port which is kind of nice though I'm not sure how many users seeking an ultra file will be 360 board will be using m2 storage but it's there if needed now the vrm is the most concerning aspect of this board I have to admit but before I get too carried away I do realize there aren't too many if any of you watching that plan on sticking a $300 u.s. core i7 processor on what's very likely a sub $100 u.s. motherboard the B 360 Emperor VD is more of your core i3 8100 type motherboard may be a core i5 8400 but probably not a core i7 8700 still I wanted to see how the 8700 got on so this is what I started with loading up the Intel XTU software we can already see that like the other objects menu I looked at in my previous video the MSI B 360 Pro V D has been downgraded to a 65 watt maximum turbo boost power draw with a maximum short power draw a value 2 watts in comparison the B 360 gaming plus was configured for 95 watts and 119 watts for the max boost so this means we are seeing a 31% downgrade in power delivery and this is no doubt going to impact the core i7 8,700 though based on we saw with the desk mini it probably shouldn't hurt the core i5 8400 firing up Cinebench r15 the 8700 scored just 1211 points but ignoring that first run and taking the average from 4 more runs resulted in a score of just eleven hundred and sixty points please note for these tests I am using the deep core gamax 200 t we know what the deal is with the crappy Intel box coolers let's just remove thermal throttling variable from these results so that means the score is 16% down on what we saw with the MSI B 360 gaming plus so let's adjust the turbo boost parameters and the x2 you software to match what we saw from the B 360 gaming plus and run Cinebench r15 for more times the B 360 Pro VD is now allowing for a score of over 13 hundred and 50 points and that's within the ballpark of what we were getting with the gaming plus not quite as good but at just under 2% we'll call that margin of error we could increase the turbo-boost settings in the x2 you software further but a long run stress test reveals why that's only beneficial for short benchmarks here we have a complex blender workload and just 30 seconds in we run into a bit of a hiccup everything looks great for the first 30 seconds the 8700 holds 4.3 gigahertz on all six cores and we're ripping through the workload without a problem then like that the motherboard wins the 8700 back down to the base clock of 3.2 gigahertz for seven seconds before cranking it back up to four point three goats for eight seconds and then repeating the process over and over and over again the reason this is happening is because the motherboards varium is overheating or at least reaching the thermal limit and then backs off the power delivery of the core i7 8,700 let's the verum cooldown over about a seven-second period and then rats power delivery back up until the thermal limit of the veeram is reached once again which as I said takes about eight seconds without sticking some kind of heat sink on the MOSFETs it's just not possible to avoid this throttling issue with the core i7 8700 of course MSI probably aren't expecting too many people to pair this processor with their cheapest B 360 motherboard and even if you do it still works without an issue it's just slower than a board with ample cooling but what about a high-end CPU you're more likely to pay with a budget board something like a core i5 8400 without making any alterations to the B 360 pro V DS configuration the core i5 8400 scores 877 points on its fourth pass which is on par with what we saw from the zed 370 god-like that's great news but what about the long run test well I think it's time to fire up blender once again with the 65 watt package TDP sealing the 8400 left us with room to spare every now and then peaking at just 62 watts for the entire test which ran for over an hour the 8400 held a constant 3.8 gigahertz without flinching for a second for gamax 200 T kept the CPU very cool at under 60 degrees and we never saw any kind of throttling that said you won't see throttling with the Intel Box cooler either on the 8400 as I found with the asrock desk many the maximum package GDP of 65 watts is sufficient for getting the most out of the core i5 8400 and this is why the Box cooler has no issue avoiding thermal throttling with this CPU this means ultra budget boards like the MSI B 360 pura-vida are perfect for use with locked core i5 processors such as daddy 400 and while it does work perfectly fun with the core i7 8700 as in it's perfectly safe and perfectly stable without upgrading the cooling you can expect to receive or expect to see up to a 20% performance hit so bear that in mind of course at this point we're only tested a single cheap B 360 board and I'll update you as more boards come in for now though it's safe to say anyone wanting to build a core i5 8400 rig on the cheap can do so with something like the MSI B 360 pro vd though we strongly suggest you consider something a little more upmarket like the B 360 gaming plus if you serious about your computing and that's going to do it for this one actually just quickly if you want to check out a review on the msi b 360 carbon pro then head over to Jared's tech he's a fellow was he that does great work I'll provide a link in the video description also the yes man he checked out the super cheap a sous B 360 model so if you're interested in that check it out and again I'll provide the link in the video description as always if you enjoyed the video be sure to hit the like button and subscribe for more content if you appreciate the work we do here to hammer on box then consider supporting us on patreon thanks for watching I'm your host Steve see you next time