Which of these five Z370 motherboards would you choose?

[King Mustard]

I have five choices:

1. Gigabyte Z370XP SLI (£118)
2. MSI Z370 Krait Gaming (£135)
3. ASRock Z370 Extreme4 (£136)
4. Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming (£140)
5. Asus Prime Z370-A (£141)

They're all very similar on paper:

I'll only be doing a 10%-or-so overclock, using my generic all-in-one liquid cooler.

Any recommendations?

 

[EXCellR8]

Since the boards are so closely related I would just go with what fits your budget and which board has your preferred layout/design and features, etc. Another thing to consider is the stability of the BIOS, so check the archive for each if you're going to OC even a little bit.

What processor and memory are you going to be using, or plan on using?

 

[DaveSimmons]

I used the ASRock Z370 Extreme4 for my 8700 non-K build in December and it has been problem-free so far.

 

[Jimie]

Asrock seems to be recommended by a lot of people, yeah why not. Also, Asus is usually a safe bet.

 

[ocer9999]

Yes, that Extreme is said to be one of the best values right now for the Z370, excellent VRM. Shame there's no wifi.

 

[aigomorla]

Asrock seems to be recommended by a lot of people, yeah why not. Also, Asus is usually a safe bet.

This is ONLY the Taichi line...
Taichi's are top notch boards.
I love them to death, you get premium stuff for what you pay for on the Taichi.

The Fatal1ty line however is absolute garbage.... your paying like 20% markup for a taichi in red branded to gamers just so they can pay that guy royalties which he no longer deserves.
When have you heard of Fatal1ty in any esport game.
Extreme line is actually their budget line... should not even have the word Extreme in it as its like calling a Toyota Corolla a Lexus.

The best boards on that list..

The Gigabyte Aorus if you like RGB beats all those boards if RGB is your thing.
The Asus PrimeZ370 will most likely be the most stable on that list

The board i can not recommend at all.
I personally dont like MSI, Quality has majorly dropped in the new class boards they have... They used to make nice boards up to the x99 and z170 however after that quality went to poop.

Just look at the issues on the X299 class killing cpu's when waking up from sleep... so i cant openly recommend them. It seems they now more focus on trying to make the board look all stealthy, and have forgotten how to make boards reliable and sold.

 

[DaveSimmons]

^ the ASRock z68 for my i5-2500 is still humming along 6-7 years later. The Extreme4 has been problem-free since I first installed it in December. I don't care whether the Extreme4 is considered "budget" or "luxe" since it just works.

 

[lukart]

Not sure if its considered Budget, I would say budget would be their Pro series, mid range the Killer top mid rage Extreme.

 

[kerumbo]

I'm happy with the ASRock Z370 Extreme4 for my i7 8700K build. I seem to "need" a crazy number of USB ports, so chose this board for the USB headers (2 USB 3, 3 USB 2 and a USB 3 Type C) and back USB Ports (5 USC 3 Type A, and a Type C), and I use them all except the internal Type C. I also like having the M.2 headers, although I'm not using them yet. Had no joy trying to install a M.2 wifi card, but that's because the tiny antenna connectors are so hard to work with, so I used a PCI wifi card and it's good. I used one of the USB 3 headers to install a front USB hub with 7 ports (SATA powered), and they all work. Also getting good results with an old PCI capture card (Hauppauge Colossus 2). And I have 4 internal hard drives, plus optical and some external drives, and 4 fans. So, in all I feel that I'm working the board pretty good, except for not using the M.2 options. No board-related problems or complaints at all. A couple of the 5 fan headers are awkwardly placed, but that's about it. My last board was a Gigabyte and it works but I like this better. By the way, your graphic says it has 4 SATA ports but this is misleading. It has 8 SATA 3 ports (6 Intel, plus 2 ASMedia), in addition to the 2 M.2 NVMe slots for SSD drives. But, if you use the M.2 ports for SSD drives, each of them will disable 2 of the regular Intel SATA ports.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I could have opinions like AigoMorla's but they are only based on personal experiences and guesses about how and why the boards are marketed. I think he has something there about the Naming-Hype Phenomenon of "Extreme" and "Fatal1ty."

Watching how AsRock caught on among Anand-Tech-ies, I was in a pinch to buy a Z77 board after I had literally crushed a dozen or more socket spring/pins on a Sabertooth I'd acquired in that line. I ordered an AsRock Extreme 3 or 4 -- about the same price as the ASUS Z77-A. For the strangest stroke of luck, I decided to look at the pins with a magnifier. It was horrific -- pins stuck in the crevices between the plastic mounds with holes for the pins. A disaster. I sent it back RMA refund.

The ASUS -A boards, unless something's changed, seem to be in the low-end of the ATX model line for ASUS. So I ordered one. It's been a standup desktop for my younger brother ever since. You could overclock it just short of optimistic expectations. Of course all of these budget-line boards follow the dictates of the processor and chipset when it comes to the number of lanes with lane-alternatives for a common pattern of ATX PCIE slots. It's enough to support an Intel consumer-enthusiast -K model chip.

Of course, I'm making inferences about the model-line and model-series, from what I saw with prior generation hardware. But that's why I'd answer "Probably -- the ASUS Prime Z370A." Asked and answered.