Affordable 300-Series Boards Are Finally Here - Conclusion
ASUS's H370 and B360 ROG STRIX Offerings - Similar and Different at the Same Time
It has been 8 days since Intel expanded their 300-series family with more affordable CPUs and boards. The whole point of the launch was to enter the wider mainstream market which Intel previously couldn't with their Z370 chipset. While Z370 has a market in the high-end and mid-tier sector, the entry tier boards make much more sense for the general audience.
You are missing out on overclocking and a few expansion capabilities but that's exactly what these motherboards are known for. You miss a few things which shouldn't matter to you anyways considering non-K CPUs don't overclock and memory prices are too high so you'd be out of luck getting hands on that fast 3600 or 4000 MHz DDR4 kit. But you do save a few by getting an H370 or B360 motherboard.
One of the reasons for testing the Core i7-8700K, the top chip of the 8th gen family, on these new motherboards was to see their limits. If they can run the Core i7-8700K at stock fine just like any other Z370 board, then they could run any other 8th gen chip. That's exactly what we saw here, performance penalty between Z370 and H370/B360 boards is so small that it's not even notable. That proves my point, H370 and B360 being just as good as Z370 for stock CPU performance. The ASUS boards performed really well here.
The feature extension for $140 and an amazing ROG STRIX design by ASUS makes the H370-F and B360-F a very solid buy for gamers and general audience who want top notch features and quality build design. I'd give the H370-F extra props for having more expansion and high-speed I/O lanes than the comparative B360 motherboard.
AORUS B360 Gaming 3 WIFI - $140 US For Fast Wireless and a Great Gaming Board
Looking at the AORUS B360 Gaming 3 WIFI, we loose some more expansion and USB capabilities compared to the H370 chipset based counterparts but AORUS makes up for the less by adding a wireless module that runs really great.
The design has been updated with new PCH heatsink and VRM heatsinks along with full support for RGB. The motherboard performed just about as much I had expected with good stock CPU performance on the Core i7-8700K. My only issue with this board was the brown colored PCB and the plastic I/O covered which felt really flimsy.
Aside from that, the AORUS B360 Gaming 3 WIFI offers gamers and general users a solid option with good performance, WIFI capabilities and a bag full of features.
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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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