The ASRock Z370 Gaming-ITX/ac Motherboard Review: Mini-ITX with Thunderbolt 3
by Joe Shields on July 13, 2018 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Gaming
- Intel
- ASRock
- Mini ITX
- 802.11ac
- Wi-Fi
- Coffee Lake
- Z370
- i7-8700K
Gaming Performance
AoTS Escalation
Ashes of the Singularity is a Real Time Strategy game developed by Oxide Games and Stardock Entertainment. The original AoTS was released back in March of 2016 while the standalone expansion pack, Escalation, was released in November of 2016 adding more structures, maps, and units. We use this specific benchmark as it relies on both a good GPU as well as on the CPU in order to get the most frames per second. This balance is able to better display any system differences in gaming as opposed to a more GPU heavy title where the CPU and system don't matter quite as much. We use the default "Crazy" in-game settings using the DX11 rendering path in both 1080p and 4K UHD resolutions. The benchmark is run four times and the results averaged then plugged into the graph.
The Gaming-ITX/ac manages to fall right in the middle of this test proving capable as the others are in this title. Our AOTSe results are all VERY close together with ~2 FPS separating both the 1080p and 4K results.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story.
One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 3 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.
Rise of the Tomb Raider results for the Z370 Gaming-ITX/ac also doesn't show anything out of the ordinary with its results landing at the peak of the bell curve.
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hansmuff - Saturday, July 14, 2018 - link
Could you please tell me which program you use to check DPC latency? Thank you kindly!Joe Shields - Monday, July 16, 2018 - link
LatencyMon - http://www.resplendence.com/latencymonVanguarde - Saturday, July 14, 2018 - link
If this is typical ASrock quality, the board will fail twice in one year like my previous board did, with a nightmare RMA process.Will never do business with ASrock again. Sticking with the adults at Asus.
dubyadubya - Saturday, July 14, 2018 - link
Must have been a fluke. My Z97 Extreme 6 is over 4 years old and is still rock solid. I have built 3 or 4 systems using Z97 Extreme 4's for friends, all still running never a problem. I had a Asrock micro ATX board I gave to a friend years ago, can't remember the model (Intel Core 2 vintage) that's still running to this day. Knock on wood. So you were just unlucky IMHO.Holliday75 - Monday, July 16, 2018 - link
One board does not represent an entire company. One RMA process issue does not as well.No company in the history of companies has had a 100% production rate. When doing large end user deployments in the past we considered anything with a DOA rate under 3% to be wonderful. That's 3 dead laptops, desktops, etc per 100. Worst one was Toshiba with a DOA rate of 8% on a 1000 laptop deployment. Ew. Anyway you have to step back and look at it from a much wider angle.
ASRock has been solid for me over the years. I have no complaints. Rocking a 5 year old rig with one right now and know plenty of people who have had no issues. I know they are not perfect.....nobody is.
gehex1 - Saturday, July 14, 2018 - link
for all your cooperate espionage and monitoring, locate dating scams and do deep background check. d a r k w e b s o l u t i o n s . codeepRED.tv - Sunday, July 15, 2018 - link
Ok, almost perfect. Now a mini itx threadripper board with thunderbolt.Only, when hell frezes over right?
mkaibear - Monday, July 16, 2018 - link
Are you mad, man???Threadripper is an *enormous* socket;
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/asrock-x399m-taic...
That's it on a mATX board...
To get x299 on a mini itx board and keep the quad channel RAM they had to shift to SODIMMs, unless you're putting the RAM on the backside of the board I can't see how they could do a quad channel TR board..
Just stick with microATX and add TB via a PCIe card!
f18ccx - Monday, July 16, 2018 - link
I have this board, everything about it is excellent except the 1.5v DDR voltage limit. My B-Die G.Skill 3200 Mhz RAM has a lot more in it than 3866/CL15. If you reading, ASRock, please give us more to play with.Dug - Friday, July 27, 2018 - link
Why is Non-UEFI POST Time used?Is there a way to find out fastest boot time?