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  • tech6 - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    $300 for no USB 3.1 from a brand with almost no mobo track record seems a little high.

    I also wish manufacturers would focus on functionality rather than gimmicks like covers, LEDs and funky colored PCBs. Not every enthusiast is 16 years old.
  • nathanddrews - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    IO Panel 5 x USB 2.0
    4 x USB 3.1 (5 Gbps)
    1 x DisplayPort (1.2)
    1 x HDMI (1.4b)
    1 x Clear CMOS button2
    1 x LAN (RJ45 port)
    1 x Optical SPDIF Out port
    1 x 7.1-ch Audio jacks
  • Death666Angel - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    My guess is he means "USB 3.1 Gen2" as opposed to the here used "USB3.1 Gen1". The difference being one is the old USB 3.0 (5Gbit/s = Gen1) and the other is the new 10Gbit/s one. USB consortium fucked that one up pretty well.
  • Threska - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    I could see covers as part of EMI and thermal management. As well as keeping board clean, and protecting from damage.
  • bigboxes - Saturday, January 20, 2018 - link

    That's what a case is for.
  • NZXTconvert - Tuesday, February 6, 2018 - link

    No 3.1? Oh contrare. There are two on board and five at the IO panel. Perfomance-wise, it's got the 370 chipset, supports 8th gen i7, and ports at M.2 for Optane. What's your beef? As for the aesthetics, could you be any more wrongheaded? For someone my age, a great deal of the appeal this board has is that it does NOT scream of the juvenile. Every sign of clutter is countered by the covers. Seamless. I'm in a whole world of happy with this board. For this to have been any company's first venture into the market is a marvel. How many companies possibly have such bragging rights? Is it niche?? These days, what isn't? I'm putting mine in a matte black Streacom FC5 Alpha. The whole setup's going to satisfy me for a decade and more. This is a very sophisticated board. And if someone wants to spring for it with its optional candy touches, RGB and all, why not? It'll perform in either event. If there's additional functionality you wish the board had, you could state specifically what you have in mind. But insulting not only the manufacturer but its customers is so, well, trendy.
  • HStewart - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    Interesting Motherboard designed - it would be interesting to find out long term effect of such designed - cooling, serviceability and other things.
  • megapleb - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    What did I miss on the comparisons? Why it is all to i9-7900X systems instead of other Z370 motherboard?
  • Joe Shields - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    We do not have any Z370 motherboard data outside of the two others that were included with different uncore. Instead of sparse graphs we chose to add it in with the 7900X/X299 boards I have data on already.

    There will be more reviews on this platform with data comparing it to like systems.
  • Slash3 - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    Basically, AT needs to get reviewin' so they have something to compare it to. :)
  • Tunrip - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    I appreciate I don't read as much as I used to, but I've been reading Anandtech for 20 years and this is the most confusing first page of an article I've ever read.

    "Default performance on this board was tough to compare as we only have datasets with varied Uncore frequencies. However, that seems to be a function of the motherboard and will vary throughout the Z370 testing. It is tough to compare it directly to the i9-7900X because of its difference in core/thread count as well cost. We can almost purchase three i7 8700Ks for one 7900X."

    1. What is Uncore?
    2. Regarding this sentence in particular: "to compare it directly to the i9-7900X" I don't understand; you are trying to compare this motherboard to a CPU?
    3. "We can almost purchase three i7 8700Ks for one 7900X." ... Ok? What is the significance of that to this review?

    I apologise if I sound harsh, but I was fascinated to read about this unusual motherboard. Anandtech has been my "go to" site for years and I was excited to see this article, but I'm left feeling confused before I've even finished reading the first page.
  • Joe Shields - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    Thanks for the input.

    1. Uncore is Non core parts of the CPU like Cache/Memory Controller, etc.
    2. Its intent is to was to setup the fact that the only datasets I had available were the 7900X ones (otherwise it would have been two others with different uncores which I threw in there to at least have an apples to apples type of comparison.
    3. When comparing performance, many people attach $ to it.

    That paragraph could be improved indeed.
  • JohnMD1022 - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    Shouldn't that be "transcore" and "ciscore"?

    lol
  • JoeyJoJo123 - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    Ayyyyyyyy, gender memes in tech articles. Good one! I enjoy your witty sense of humor! You should feel good about yourself today for making that stretch.
  • we - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    Terms from gender ideology, which is all about extreme self-deception and lack of self-esteem, really don't lend themselves well as descriptors in any area of science and technology, whether with or without humerous intent.
  • Death666Angel - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    Honestly, I just don't get it. But trans and cis are technical/science terms. They are used in chemistry all the time and to denounce psychology like that is rather ignorant.
  • we - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    @Death666Angel, Aha, was their scientific usage the implied reference? Anyhow, under the umbrella of psychology you'll find some proper science, but also a lot of nonsense. Sigmund Freud started it by speculating about early childhood sexuality. These theories have increasingly found their way into mainstream psychology during the last two decades, but they remain speculation and have no sound scientific basis. Same applies to gender ideology.
  • Death666Angel - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    Well, whatever the reason may be for someone identifying as "trans" or "cis" in a gender context, what is unscientific about it? It is merely a descriptor for what kind of state they identify as. And science is nothing if not description first and foremost.
  • mapesdhs - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    It's unscientific in a gender context because people who "identify" in that way are doing so based on *feelings*, which is not an argument.
  • we - Thursday, January 11, 2018 - link

    Collecting data based on self-reporting just stands at the beginning of a scientific inquiry. Insights should be based on proper scientific evaluation of the data, not on inferential jumps. The vast majority of human beings develop happily with their gender identity in accordance with their biological sex, but gender ideologists claim: it is a fact that dna only determines sex but not gender; a transgender state of mind is a natural state of identity (and healthy - if it was not for distress caused by the wrong body!); the correct response is affirmation by all involved (friends, family, teachers, physicians etc.); in the case of young persons it is desirable to propose puberty blockers, - without any conclusive scientific evidence to prove any of those claims. This is now very much off topic, so I will stop now. If you are interested in this topic, you could start a thread in an appropriate section of the forum, but you may find that technically and scientifically minded contributors show little support for gender ideology.
  • madalice - Friday, January 26, 2018 - link

    There is plenty of scientific evidence that the best outcomes for transgender individuals come from affirmation and supportive medical interventions. See this blog post (https://genderanalysis.net/2018/01/evidence-of-hea... for a decent list of references on that topic. You may find that the expertise of participants in a forum focused on computer hardware and technology is of limited value in a discussion of gender identity.
  • edzieba - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    The whole paragraph could definitely have benefited from a preface of "we don't have any data for Z370 boards, so X299 is the closest comparison we have". Along with some explanation for where the numbers came from for the "different uncore" 8700ks: are they tested on another motherboard which varies the uncore frequency (that different motherboards do that AT ALL would be worthy of an article in and of itself)? Were they tested on the same board (different CPUs have different uncore frequencies even with the same designation, also worthy of an article), and if so why can't the N7's uncore not be changed for an apples-to-apples test? Are they numbers from the same CPU with the uncore overclocked on the N7 board (if so, why are the numbers everywhere /except/ the 'overclocking' page)?
  • Tunrip - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    Thank you for the response :) I think maybe you over-worried about what you could/couldn't tell people here quite early on. I appreciate your honest answers and will look forward to reading more of your articles :)
  • viktorborge - Sunday, January 28, 2018 - link

    If you tried to say that this is the first Z370 board you tested, and that you didn't have any other Z370 boards available, so you don't have anything to compare it to, why didn't you just write that? That paragraph sounds like what you write in a research paper when you want to hide some screwup behind jargon.

    You could have compared it to to the data from your initial review of the 8700K:
    https://www.anandtech.com/show/11859/the-anandtech...
    Yeah, yeah, different setup, but it still makes WAY more sense to do this than the i9.
  • Sailor23M - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    Agree w/ Tunrip, threw me off as well.
  • Slash3 - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    I re-read it twice as I thought someone had accidentally pasted a paragraph from the conclusion page in the introduction page. I stopped asking myself questions when I got to the graphs containing undefined asterisks.
  • Galcobar - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    The whole article could have used a copy editor, unfortunately. It's replete with both fragmentary and run-on sentences, incomplete lines of thought, and flat-out missing explanations.

    Aside from the grammatical issues, the concerns commenters raised are typical of a piece written by someone who knows the subject matter. The author thus does not see the jumps from point to point which the reader for lack of background information cannot follow.
  • ApePriori - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    Yeah, 'Coffe Lake' shows up twice, paragraph and header.
  • :nudge> - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    One of the most surprising and appealing things I've seen reviewed here in quite a while. I wasn't evening planning on buying a motherboard but am considering getting one. Considering it's their first MB, the price is to be expected. I don't mind the lack of usb3.1 and like the sacrifice of 2 Sata for better M2 support. I hope this clean (no gamer) look starts a trend.
  • l8gravely - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    The most annoying things about this board is the lack of colors on the audio block, making it more difficult to figure out what goes where. Especially whe it's in the case and around back. The second thing is the shrouds, I worry that the board will get hotter than expected, since air won't be able to flow around it as easily. Plus, when you do (you know you will!) drop a screw and it goes under a shroud, it's going to be a pain to get back out.

    I do like the lack of bling, but that's cause I'm a grumpy old man. Get off my lawn kids! I *never* look into my cases once they're setup, so not having that part is great.

    Being a new vendor, with new BIOS and other features, I'd probably steer clear of this board unless the price was super good, just because the time I waste chasing down problems isn't worth it.

    Can you do some long term stability tests? Maybe put it all into a case with crappy airflow and then let it crank doing some CPU stress tests for 48, 72 or more hours? With lots of IO and stressing of the PCIe busses?

  • Death666Angel - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    "The most annoying things about this board is the lack of colors on the audio block, making it more difficult to figure out what goes where. Especially whe it's in the case and around back."
    It's clearly labeled and color coded on the IO shield. Though I don't know how colors or labels help inserting stuff when you can't see them (around the back). ;)
    The heat thing is also very likely irrelevant. These kinds of designs have been around a while and I haven't ever heard a lot of fuss about more motherboards dying due to lack of airflow over the general board. Also, many watercooling setups have very little to no airflow over the mainboard and do fine longevity wise. :)
    I totally agree on the screw recovery point. :D
  • Threska - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    I have a case where the "back" is pointed up, so all that's visible.
  • Dug - Monday, January 15, 2018 - link

    You pick what the port does once you plug something in. It's not set in stone so the color doesn't really matter.
  • praktik - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    They really need to make the CMOS battery accessible whenever these covers/armor are used.

    I had one such from ASUS, my kingdom for a hatch, a hatch!!
  • TuffLittleUnit - Sunday, January 21, 2018 - link

    ^^^ THIS! I'm still using an Asus Z77 Sabertooth and when the CMOS battery ran out last year I had to use a Dremel to cut out the plastic armour to get at the battery slot.
  • Gunbuster - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    Who is ODM'ing from them? I find it doubtful they spun up their own motherboard factory...
  • dave_the_nerd - Tuesday, January 9, 2018 - link

    This.

    Heck. They probably subcontracted the design too.
  • Slash3 - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    The motherboard is manufactured for NZXT by ECS. You can also order extra covers for a few of the areas in colors like red or purple. I tried to find a picture of the board without the shroud in a gallery somewhere, but there doesn't appear to actually be one in this article despite it referencing one. It's sort of all over the place.

    This is a picture of the board sans shroud, courtesy of Guru3D
    http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/index.php?ct=news...
    If that link breaks, they have a preview up on their site. Tom's has a full review up.
  • Slash3 - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    I should also add that the picture I linked to by Guru3D is straight off of the NZXT launch page and is a 3D render. But it gives you an idea of the underlying componentry.
  • Joe Shields - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    A picture of the board without the shroud was also in the article, in the gallery...
  • Slash3 - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    Not trying to be that guy, but I honestly don't see a link or review page containing a gallery in the article!
  • artk2219 - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    Honestly I think it looks much better without the pointless shroud.
  • mariush - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    The board was made under contract by ECS ... not particularly a great OEM for motherboards... the board is more looks than performance anyway.
    For 300$ they could have made it an aluminum shield instead of steel.
  • yannigr2 - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    THE SPECS ARE WRONG

    USB 3.0 Chipset
    6 x (4 at back panel, 2 onboard headers)
    USB 2.0 Chipset
    8 x (4 at back panel, 4 onboard headers)

    8 USB 3.0( USB 3.1 Gen 1)(4+2+2 - 1 Header = two ports) and 11 USB 2.0(there are only 5 in the I/O panel and only 3 headers).
  • Joe Shields - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    Corrected. That is what I get for doing this in a much abbreviated time slot through the Holidays. :)
  • sonny73n - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    Case, MB and PSU makers seriously need to come together to redesign the whole thing to eliminate issues that we’ve been having for decades. Heavy CPU HSF still dangling on vertically mounted MB unless you go water. Cables management troublesome. Airflows from fans aren’t flowing in one direction. Still not dirt proof....

    I have solutions but my words probably will fall into deaf ears.
  • jabber - Saturday, January 13, 2018 - link

    I've said for a long time the internal connectors (especially power) in PCs all need a redesign. Most of them are either too big, too old or just not practical in the 21st century.
  • SanX - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    Smells like price fixing is at light speed in mobo business.
  • Hxx - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    OEM is ECS. not the best by any means. The price tag is way to high. the maximus code is $320 ,imo a much nicer looking board with many more features including a similar style with most of the pcb covered.
    I like that we get more options, but this just feels not well thought out by NZXT.
  • pjcamp - Wednesday, January 10, 2018 - link

    I see this as a nightmare to get dust bunnies out of.
  • temptemp - Thursday, January 11, 2018 - link

    WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU COMPARING DIFFERENT CPUs TO THE 8700K?!?!?!?!?

    Scientific method is you keep all except one variable constant.
    This is a motherboard comparison.... wow

    I throught this was a reputable site... wow lost my trust
  • Dug - Monday, January 15, 2018 - link

    That was explained if you actually read the article. You obviously aren't a reputable or trusted reader.
  • Kaihekoa - Saturday, January 13, 2018 - link

    The usual Anandtech quality reviews, but the comparisons to i9 platform MBs are completely useless.
  • justareader - Sunday, January 14, 2018 - link

    The I/O ports should be color coordinated as well.
  • thomasg - Monday, January 15, 2018 - link

    I can appreciate the no-nonsense looks, and I'm sure there's a (probably very small) market for it.
    But what the market is really missing is an actual no-nonsense board.

    I'd just love a simple and functional board with all the regular firmware options the high-end stuff has. No useless shrouds, no fancy lighting, no pointlessly oversized component coolers.
    Just a solid board with an usable design for proper airflow (i. e. no 20 cc passive blocks oriented at 90 and 180 degrees at the same time).

    For example something as Super Micro now does for Epyc workstations, just for the desktop platform: https://www.supermicro.nl/Aplus/motherboard/EPYC70...

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