Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming K3 Motherboard Review

AORUS Z370 GAMING Motherboard There's a vast range of impressive Z370 motherboards hitting the market right now. Of course, since the new Intel 8th Generation processors require a revised pin layout to accommodate the new core count, that's to be expected. It does suck that those on Z270 have to change motherboards, especially when the feature-set is pretty much unchanged. However, since we saw the performance of the new CPUs, all is forgiven... or at least, more easily brushed aside. Check out our reviews of the 8th Generation i5-8400, i5-8600K, and i7-8700K. With the impressive CPU performance in mind, I'm eager to see what the Gaming K3 has to offer against some pretty fierce competition. Equipped with full RGB lighting and a kick-ass stock design, it's obviously tailored to the gaming crown. However, with Dual M.2, ALC1220 Audio, Intel Gaming LAN, USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A/C, Smart Fan 5, Anti-Sulfur Resistors, and more, it's packing plenty of punch for any system build. Features Supports 8th Gen Intel® Core™ Processors Dual Channel Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 4 DIMMs Intel® Optane™ Memory Ready ASMedia 3142 USB 3.1 Gen 2 with USB Type-C™ and Type-A Multi-Way Graphics Support with PCIe Armor and Ultra Durable™ Design ALC1220 120dB SNR HD Audio with Smart Headphone AMP and WIMA audio capacitors Intel GbE LAN Gaming Network with cFosSpeed Internet Accelerator Software RGB FUSION with Multi-Zone Digital LED Light Show design, support digital LED & RGB LED strips Smart Fan 5 features Multiple Temperature Sensors and Hybrid Fan Headers with FAN STOP Dual Ultra-Fast M.2 with PCIe Gen3 x4 & SATA interface Anti-Sulfur Resistors Design Ultra Durable™ 25KV ESD and 15KV Surge LAN Protection Lightning-Fast Intel® Thunderbolt™ 3 AIC Support APP Center Including EasyTune™ and Cloud Station™ Utilities What AORUS Had to Say "The AORUS Z370 enthusiast motherboards are faster and more powerful than any other motherboards the world has seen. With aggressively redesigned armor and thermal heatsinks, its performance capabilities and durability are second to none. Performance is no stranger to AORUS, with exotic cooling and an ability to be tuned to peak performance, AORUS motherboards will exceed expectations." - AORUS Motherboard Overview Specifications For the full specifications, please visit the official product page here. A Closer Look Black and red have been trotted out a lot for gaming hardware, but I must admit, this motherboard looks pretty great. Most of the equipment is black, with a large grey Aorus logo spanning the PCB. There's not a lot of red on there, but just enough to highlight some of the more interesting hardware. There are four DIMM slots in the corner, with a beautiful two-tone design. Also tucked away over here, a pair of USB 3.0 ports, a few fan headers, and an RGBW header. There are six SATA ports on the motherboard, with four on the side, and two on the bottom row. Why they're not all together, I don't know. The heat sink on the chipset looks excellent though, with an aggressive cut-out design and stylish Aorus logo decal on the top. The bottom row is reasonably well equipped too, offering a few USB 2.0 ports, and the usual headers for front panel audio, power controls, etc. Armoured Slots There are only two full-size PCIe slots on the K3. However, they both come with reinforcing armour that not only looks great but will help sustain the weight of modern graphics cards. M.2 storage is always welcome, and you'll find two M.2 mounts on this motherboard between the PCIe slots. The rear I/O isn't too crazy, but it's certainly competent. It offers up a good amount of USB connections, including a USB Type-C port. There is an HDMI and DVI connection for those that need it, as well as HD audio and GbE LAN. Testing and Methodology Test Procedure Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to disclose vital information regarding the benchmarking process so that readers can quantify the results and attempt to replicate them using their hardware. When it comes to motherboard reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Rember that your choice of motherboard, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there's always a margin for error when using the software. Therefore, your experience may vary. Each benchmark runs three times, and the average figure is taken to try to reduce the effect of hardware variation. Of course, any relevant details regarding the parameters will be listed below. Test Systems X399 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - Crucial DDR4 2400MHz Quad-Channel 32GB CPU Cooler – Noctua D15S Graphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X299 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - Crucial DDR4 2400MHz Quad-Channel 32GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit AM4 Ryzen R3, R5 and R7 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - GeIL DDR4 2977MHz Dual Channel 16GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Z270 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 2666 MHz CPU Cooler – Noctua D15S Graphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X99 - Our GPU Review Test Bench Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM – Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 2666 MHz CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Open Air Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 64-bit Games Used All games are tested on a 60 Hz display with V-Sync off for all tests. Previously we would use "extreme" presets, but these have now been adjusted to "Medium" or equivalent to better test the capabilities of the CPU, not the GPU. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Pure Hair Off Deus Ex (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Uplay) Medium Preset Turf Effects Off Far Cry Primal (Uplay) Normal Preset Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download) FireStrike (1080p) Benchmark Unigine Superposition (download) 1080p Extreme Benchmark PCMark 10 Professional (download) Express Benchmark WPrime (download) 32M and 1024M Power usage recorded at 1024M 50% complete, thermals recorded at 75% CineBench R15 (download) CPU Multi CPU Single Handbrake (download) Custom MP4 to MKV 4K conversion (details below) AIDA64 Engineer (download) CPU-Z (download) HWMonitor (download) Handbrake To stress processors to their absolute limit and accurately judge their performance in video editing workloads, we transcode a 7.7GB compilation of gaming footage; this particular file is freely available from here. The captured footage is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long, it has a bit rate of 50.1 Mbps and it uses the Advanced Video Codec. Additionally, the video runs at a constant 30 frames-per-second and opts for a 3820 x 2140 (4K) resolution. Once loaded into Handbrake, we then transcode the 4K MP4 to an MKV file using the "normal" profile. Other Notes A rest period of 2-5 minutes is observed between each piece of software allowing the system to return to its idle power usage and temperatures. Background services like Windows Update are checked to not be running during the testing period by setting WiFi to Metered Connection. Thanks Thank you to Noctua, Crucial, ASUS, Gigabyte, Lian-Li, be quiet!, OCZ, for providing the hardware that helps makes these tests possible! Synthetic Benchmarks 3DMark Firestrike A score of 21848 is undoubtedly decent while running a stock CPU. It's obviously not the fastest, but it's competitive given the features and price range of this motherboard. Stock Overclocked Overclocking soon had the K3 rubbing shoulders with the best of the best, hitting a score of 23777. While it's not at the top, it's hardly a million miles away from the top spot. Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme Again the K3 scores a little low, but still pretty much on par with everything else on the market at stock speeds. Stock Overclocked Once again, as soon as we overclock, the results are pretty much identical across the board. There is no issue with PCIe throughput here! PCMark 10 Express The K3 had no trouble putting the power down for out 8th Gen CPU, delivering a respectable score of 5393 in PCMark 10 Express. Stock Overclocked It seems buying this motherboard and CPU and not overclocking would be madness. As you can see, the score shot up to a much healthier 6282 once we hit 5 GHz. WPrime 32M and 1024M A very competitive time in WPrime, beating out all other Z370 motherboards, which was surprising given it's about mid-range in other benchmarks. Stock Overclocked Cinebench R15 For Cinebench, the K3 performed at the top of the mid-range motherboards, scoring high with 1435 at stock, and 1643 once overclocked. Stock Overclocked Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K Stock Handbrake is very CPU bound, and there's little to no difference between motherboards. That being said, the K3 put out a solid time, beating out many others by 0.9 FPS, which is very good indeed. It also hit 61 FPS while overclocked, which is also very competitive. Overclocked AIDA 64 Memory Bandwidth and Latency Memory performance weren't as high as I had hoped. However, it's not bad and still within the rating for our memory kit. Latency was a little high too, but more often than not, issues like this are quickly tidied up with a few BIOS updates. Gaming Performance The K3 may be a little more affordable than most, but it's still tuned to be a gaming motherboard. With that in mind, it's no surprise to see it hit a very respectable 133.1 FPS in Deus Ex. It also hit just over 190 FPS in Rise of the Tomb Raider, a 141 in Ghost Recon and 139 in Far Cry. They're not the fastest or the slowest times for the Z370 platform, but they're more than good enough to get a thumbs up from me. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Rise of the Tomb Raider Ghost Recon: Wildlands Far Cry Primal Power Consumption and Temperatures Power Consumption Without too many crazy features, the K3 is pretty efficient, clocking some very low power usage for the Z370 platform. Overall, this is pretty impressive given it gave great performance without draining too much power. Stock Overclocked Final Thoughts Pricing The Gigabyte Aorus Gaming K3 Z370 Motherboard is available now from pretty much every major retailer. It's pretty reasonably priced too at just £135.71 on Amazon.co.uk. Of course, this is not the cheapest Z370 motherboard, but it's a long shot from the most expensive. Given that the performance was as good as more costly motherboards, and undoubtedly competitive while gaming, it's a bargain for anyone building their next gaming PC. Overview There's not a lot on this motherboard that stands out and makes me say "wow." However, at £130 it doesn't have to blow me away, and motherboards with crazy features typically start at around twice the price of this one. It's far from the bottom end though, and you get pretty much everything you'll need for a mid to high-end gaming PC. Aesthetics The motherboard is pretty bare concerning hardware, but a beautiful layout and some cleverly placed decals keep it looking exciting. The enormous Aorus bird on the PCB, as well as the RGB lit Aorus bird on the chipset heatshield look superb. Black and red highlights on the VRM cooler, DIMM slots, and on the PCIe slots give it some added gaming flair too. I would have like to see the DIMM slots armoured to match the two PCIe slots, purely for aesthetic reasons, but as it is, it looks great. Of course, the PCIe slots are more vital to have armour these days, especially with the weight of modern graphics cards. Performance At this price range, the Aorus Gaming K3 motherboard is ticking all the right boxes. It delivered competitive performance in virtually every benchmark. The memory performance looked a little lower in our synthetic test, but when it came to real-world performance, it didn't seem to be slowing things down. The gaming performance is right where you would want it to be, and delivered the high frame rates we've come to expect from the 8th Gen Intel CPUs and the GTX 1080 Ti. Added Value With high performance and quality audio delivered by the ALC1220 chipset, it's unlikely you'll be needed any additional sound processing hardware. There's no built-in Wi-Fi, but with Intel GbE LAN Gaming, you'll have no issues with fast networking performance here. Speaking of fast, a pair of Ultra-Fast M.2 mounts will help you drive those game loading times down to a minimum. There's not a vast amount of RGB lighting on the motherboard, but it does offer some, as well as a few addressable headers to expand on the setup, as well as RGB Fusion software to make customisation a breeze. Pros Dual M.2 mounts Good power delivery for overclocking Great efficiency ALC1220 Audio RGB Fusion Multi-GPU support Armoured PCIe slots Good connectivity Stylish design Great gaming performance Competitive price Cons None Neutral No onboard power controls or Debug LED Slight low memory performance, although it didn't appeal to hurt real-world performance