Test Setup
For testing, we used the Intel Core i7-8700K which was sent by Intel and the three 300-series boards that were sent by Gigabyte and ASUS.
The Intel Coffee Lake family comes with higher core count on the main stream platform but prices are close to the predecessors in the same segment. The reason for selecting the Core i7-8700K is to check how well these new mid-range motherboards can support Intel's flagship mainstream i7 processor compared to the high-end series (Z370).
Intel H370 / B360 Test Setup:
| Processor | Intel Core i7-8700K |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | AORUS B360 Gaming 3 WiFI ASUS ROG STRIX H370-F Gaming ASUS ROG STRIX B360-F Gaming Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 7 ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-E Gaming ASRock Z370 Professional Gaming i7 |
| Power Supply | Corsair RM 750X Gold Plus |
| Solid State Drive | Samsung SSD 960 EVO M.2 (512 GB) |
| Hard Disk | Seagate Barracuda 2 TB 7200.12 |
| Memory | G.SKILL Trident Z RGB Series 32 GB (4 x 8GB) CL16 3600 MHz |
| Case | Corsair Graphite Series 780T Full Tower |
| Video Cards | MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Lightning X |
| Cooling Solutions | Cryorig R1 Ultimate |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit |
Our test rig includes the Samsung 960 EVO 500 GB SSD that boots up our main OS while a 2 TB Seagate HDD is used for demonstration purposes for the Intel Optane memory. In addition to these, we are running a MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Lightning X graphics card, a Corsair RM 750X Gold Plus power supply and 32 GB of G.Skill provided Trident Z RGB series memory which runs with a clock speed of DDR4-3600 MHz. For cooling, we used the Cryorig R1 Ultimate (dual fan) air cooler.
We won't be focusing on Intel's Core i7-8700K architecture or overclocking in this review since it is entirely the same chip as Skylake along with minor improvements and the boards can barely OC the CPU or memory (limited to DDR4-2666). The Skylake / Kaby Lake architecture analysis can be seen in detail here.
Contents
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About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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