Gadgetory

are you in the market for a Z 370 motherboard and you don't know which one you want to get whether it be an horas and azuz as rock or an MSI motherboard well you've come to the right video because today I'm gonna be comparing all four against each other we're gonna go through the vrm temps overclocking the BIOS the next the onboard audio and also a big request from you guys on Twitter to check out the auto overclocking features as well so exactly who's gonna be the winner find out at Tech yes welcome back and here we have for mammoth XIII 70 motherboards from four different vendors first up the MSI gaming Pro carbon AC which comes in at $200 or if you're in ours three hundred and thirty dollars so the price is a little bit off there for us Aziz though second is the Zeus Strix II which comes in at 210 us and isn't available in oz yet then there's the azrog Z 370 gaming professional which is two hundred and seventy dollars though for what it's worth the Z 370 tachi is the exact same thing - the ten gigabits per second Ethernet port and that comes in a 210 or 270 ozzie so it's very well priced in Australia in terms of Triple P then the last competitor we have is the courageous and I say that deliberately because they and that's Oris wanted me to put their 140 dollar ultra gaming board up against the rest they were confident it compete and you got to respect that though the Aussie pricing is a little off costing 250 Australian in comparison though let's get this show on the road and first up the V RMS and temperatures here we use the i7 8700 K at 5 gigahertz and an Ida 60 for stress test for at least 10 minutes to warm up those heat sinks and really old boards scored roughly the same here as I tested throughout the day with slight variations in ambient temperatures first up the Ezra came in with its impressive 12 phase BRM at 70 point 8 degrees at 28 degrees ambient at 1.33 volt and level 1 max LLC drawing around a hundred and eighty-five watts for total from the wall and since the Ida readings were inaccurate for this motherboard in particular I used hardware monitor which showed the voltages were all pun intended rock-solid this board also managed to get a stable 5.1 gigahertz at 1.4 volt winning the max OC as well as overclocking to 5 gigahertz with the lowest voltage measured in hardware monitor post stress testing the Zeus Trixie however came in very close with a one point three four volt stable at 5 gigahertz at level 6 LLC which is the second highest on its smooth 10 phase vrm wattage was very similar to the as report and vrm temperatures maxed out at sixty eight point nine degrees at 26 degrees ambience so virtually the same and lastly this board managed to pull the 8700 K into five point one at one point for two volt and then next up we had the Auris ultra gaming coming in with also a smooth criminal' istic 1.34 volt at five gigahertz with a turbo which essentially means the max level more on this later LLC setting and also being able to hit 5.1 gigas at one point for two volt the vrm temperatures were sixty eight point eight degrees at 26 degrees ambience on its eight phase-- vrm so what it's from the wall and temperatures were virtually identical to the other two last up we have the MSI gaming Pro carbon a/c coming in with its 10 phase vrm and being able to hit 5 gigahertz at one point 3 5 volt with an LLC of level for overclocking was a little strange on the 8700 K on this board I only just managed to hit 5 gigahertz stable and it did so with only drawing an extra roughly 10 watts from the wall so did fall slightly behind the other three boards here and it couldn't hit 5.1 gets on the corsair h 110 a cooler no matter what i did with it v RM temperatures however were quite good coming at a 65 point one degrees at 24 degrees ambience so for this first segment as ROC does score a slight victory here having a 12 phase v arm that delivers slightly better on the overclocked with albeit the same heat and wattage which all factors equal is a slightly better thing the all four boards were good for a manual 5 gigahertz overclock on a deal it at i7 8700 K now under part two here we're gonna take a look at the BIOS settings and the performance on these boards and they all showed Cinebench scores that were all roughly the same and the memory latency timings showed the same - so nothing to really gain in terms of hidden performance by buying one motherboard over the other at the same clock settings however I will say that the m2 slot provided by the azuz Strix II did actually work and it worked exceptionally well dropping the nvme SSD temperatures running on full load after 10 minutes by a whopping 20 degrees great to see an implementation of this that actually works the MSI m2 shield on the other hand actually increased temperatures by roughly four degrees and not to mention it's right near where a hot GPU backplate would be sitting and stuck in between a CPU and it's cooler this does need some improvement MSI so I'd like to see this fixed in a future release those this does get props for implementing something that not only works really well but also looks very pleasing to the other two boards from as rock and Oris just had naked nvme slots which gives the victory to a Zeus here Zeus also has the option to mount a fan a 40 millimeter one over the vrm heatsink - with the vrm bracket included there is also a CPU installation help kit to guide your cpu in especially handy if this is going to be your first day lid now what about all the different biases this is where the azuz and Ezreal boards scored a victory here having all the settings I could personally want and also having the option to quickly and easily update your boss via routed internet connection all four boards have backup biases and it was impressive to see that the boss update methods on all four boards manually reset your PC revert to safe default settings and then update which is a general improvement all round though I'd like to see both MSI and ORS offer the option to update the blast via Internet in the future the overclocking settings on the Auris - were quite tedious some of the vocabulary used could definitely use some work changing things like the LLC labeling - levels from one to five for example with diagrams would be great to help first-time overclockers instead of just having standard turbo and rocket boost settings as the labels the msi did score some props here for having everything you need to overclock all on the same this is very easy for first-time overclockers and I've found locking in the settings here were quick and easy so the Emma sidebars is great for you guys if it's your first 8700 K or your 8600 K and you're gonna get into overclocking though switching gears over to the azouz board it had an extra feature that I noticed and that was live memory overclocking which is very useful for people trying to fast track a high memory overclock since memory over clocks usually just have a bar if you are over that bar you're stable under and your system will freeze so nice addition on the Strix II last up we have asrock here we have the simplicity mixed in with detail asrock biases always offer everything I need with laid out descriptions the offset setting I found is great for stability too on the 8700 K at 5.1 gigahertz and they offer the RGB lighting control direct from the bias itself so you don't need to install any extra apps and lastly smart fan control across all four boards was exceptional here too though segue into this next test is one that you guys requested I do on Twitter the auto overclocking here the winner was horas with their gaming ultra board I lucked in the 5 gigahertz Auto OC setting and to my surprise this worked first go and it was completely stable albeit the voltage was at one point three nine volt versus one point three four volt so it was roughly 50 milli volt higher than the manual tune but it was the only board here to lock in a usable 5 gigahertz table off the auto IC feature the azouz board did have a 5 gigahertz - but I found the clocks were all over the place and the Cinebench score reflected this as well so this will probably get better in a future blast update however there was an easy tuning function and this was interesting to say the least when I opened it up it had three different settings and I found that the actual box coolest setting included was the one that worked and worked extremely well the water cooler and the air coolers actually crashed the computer so they weren't stable at all but the Box cooler setting managed to lock in a four point nine five gigahertz overclock which was stable and it worked really well then next up we had asrock with their 5 gigahertz auto OC they also had different settings as well going from 4.4 to 4.8% abyss it through the voltage up to 1.5 volt and out of the wall it was juicing way too much wattage so although stable it was a potential CPU melting stable one which I can't recommend at all the 4.8 gigahertz auto OC however was rock stable at one point three nine volt so it was overloading the CPU way too much but that said however this 4.8 gigahertz should work on any 8700 K I don't imagine one that it wouldn't work on the msi board also had the auto overclock feature labeled as game boost and upon turning that on it got two windows and started the stress test and then going back down to 4.4 gigahertz so it was ultimately just a hundred megahertz boost this also showed up in the cinnamon scores as well very odd is in the previous generation I am positive that it was Emma sized board that hit the most amazing Auto overclock I've seen in my life this got made 7700 K to 5 gigahertz at pretty much the manual overclocked settings that are locked in myself so I mean MSI if you fired that guy doing the overclocks in your bias division you need to bring him back please he did some amazing work last generation though anyways surprisingly the lowest-cost board here came in with the best auto overclock so kudos to orous I guess that confidence is starting to build up a little bit now it's time to talk about aesthetics audio and extra features and aesthetics is really going to be subjective I'm gonna say just take a look at the b-roll and see which one looks best for you I honestly love the RGB lighting on the Auris it looks gorgeous at night though it does come at the expense of having no AC Wireless unlike the other three boards here and also there is no clear CMOS on the back so some features have been sacrificed for that spicy lighting though the audio was very good having roughly minus 80 decibels of crosstalk and all motherboards had very low crosstalk and they're all pretty much using the same Realtek ALC 12:20 despite the naming differences though the differences here in the crosstalk itself between the azuz horas and asrock boards is that they all had a slight leaking of crosstalk at a volume level over 90 and then the MSI board exhibited the same leaking at a volume level over 95 so basically keep the volume at 90 or under if you are in one of the Triple A motherboards and 95 and under if you're on the MSI board frequency response curve showed that all four boards were exceptional here with under 10 Hertz only having roughly a -3 decibel drop-off this is the sub base so you shouldn't even notice it and it shouldn't be any different to normal headphones unless you like some shake in your headphones which I do as for RGB control they all have their own apps for controlling RGB lighting however Zeus does have the widest supported options with the aura sync lighting and has two headers for 5 volt and 12 volt options though as for the mic imports I will let you guys have a listen we're gonna start this microphone test off with the v-moda burn pro plugged directly into the Z 3 70s rock fatality gaming Pro with the volume level of 85 and +10 DB so here is the Z 370 East Rick's motherboard I'm just gonna quickly stop the fans manually with hands and you guys can hear four there's any noise here's a sound test on the Z 370 carbon pro AC from MSI with the v-moda burn pro at the same levels as you heard before here's quick mic test on the Z 370 horas ultra gaming motherboard with a volume level of 80 and plus 10 decibels and as stated before the Auris board doesn't carry wireless unfortunately though the MSI carbon series has an add-in PCIe wireless and the Strix AM fatality boards carry this onboard with their AC and bluetooth features all three had strong signal strength to boot connecting to my router with all having five bars at 2.4 gigahertz and all having three bars at five gigahertz the router is roughly ten meters away on the floor below so it does have to travel through a few walls all four boards carry programs to adjust things like RGB lighting and adjust clocks in Windows if you wish to as well this is where as well the DPC latency app from MSI adds to simplicity on overclocking with the MSI boards though ultimately for this category there really isn't a winner it's more a subjective thing that way we'll say the Azeroth board does have dual onboard one gigabit NICs even on the Taichi and in the case of the fatality it has a further third NIC that is 10 gigabits per second which and a $70 premium over the Taichi isn't bad going at all though the people who would utilize this I am sure are far and few however one thing the Azeroth board does have which I love is a clear CMOS button the other three boards don't have this on the rear and this is honestly the best spot for this button especially once you put all your components in a case and you want to start overclocking there is also a debug LED readout that can double down as a CPU temperature readout which I found is really cool in operation and lossy compatibility on all four boards was fine with the corsair 16 gigabyte to buy a kit that i used and i did use the latest biased revisions before testing these boards throughout the 12th and 13th of November 2017 so now it's time for the conclusion which Z 370 should you buy which is the best well they are all good for an overclocked 8700 k and they all have exceptionally good onboard audio and performed well at 5 gigahertz with a 3 gigahertz XMP corsair memory kit though they all have their strengths and weaknesses first off the Auris ultra gaming budget-friendly impressive aesthetics in my opinion solid auto OC which took this to 5 gigahertz and also a max manual overclock did hit 5.1 gigahertz - however BIOS features and labeling could use some improvement and there is also no wireless onboard the chipset itself next up is the Strix II intricate bias and some features not seen on the other three boards great manual overclocking and the m-dot - heatsink worked exceptionally well 5.1 gigahertz was also obtainable - however the 5 gigahertz auto OC and also some of the easy tuning pitches could use some touching up and it was quite wonky and I'm sure a Zeus will update this soon however the first auto OC option did work really well scoring four point nine five gigahertz so coming very close to the Auris board though RGB options and the aesthetics were also smooth to third in line we have the MSI gaming Pro carbon a/c this had the strength of having a very beginner friendly BIOS great if it's your first time overclocking manually and also the apps in Windows make this super easy to include a PCIe Wireless is nice you can port this over to future builds or sell it separately if you don't need it however the implementation of the vrm and the power delivery was slightly behind the other three boards I thought just slightly and I managed to hit five gigahertz stable though 5.1 gigahertz wasn't obtainable and the game Boost auto IC was near useless only giving an extra 100 megahertz over a stock 8700 K factory clock and the included m2 shield made temperatures of the m2 SSD hotter so that definitely needs to get fixed now last up we have the Azeroth fatality professional and as I said before however I will be basing this off the Tai Chi which I feel is more practical for most people it was the most expensive at $210 however it was the winner in today's comparison at least for me and I'm not saying this because they're a channel sponsor asrock have been completely on point with their motherboards since the x99 days this is e 370 is no different feature packed and all about control it has a 12 phase vrm and the bias is awesome to work with and you even have the option to control your RGB and other options that just makes sense for overclockers looking to get the most out of the CPUs on either air or water over clocks without breaking the bank the auto OSI feature also worked third best in this comparison with the 4.8 gigahertz being a stable medium however asrock you need to fix that 5 gigahertz Auto SC setting as it was locking in some very dangerous settings which I can't recommend anyone put in though that aside a clear CMOS button in a handy debug LED that can double down as the CPU temp readout of it also has three MDOT two slots to boot and you guys that's it for today and also last night Z 370 comparison if you enjoyed this video then don't forget to hit that like button this one took me a long time to do also if you have any comments about today's video or you have any comments on overclocking in general then drop a comment the comment section below a lot of people are pretty experienced around here they'll be able to help you out straight away if not I'll be sure to drop a reply in myself or if you want to ask me a question directly you can follow me on Twitter I usually reply pretty quickly there and with that aside let me know in the comments - what was your favorite board out of today's comparison and why I love reading your comments as always and I'll catch you in another tech video very soon peace out for now bye