Which of these Z370 mainboards?

[IMhereNOW]

Hi,

 

since my old rig's mainboard died and there are no new boards available where I live, I wanna upgrade to an i7 8700K. I've only got experience with MSI and ASrock boards and I just like to hear your opinions about the boards I'm currently looking at: ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero, Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 7, ASRock Fatal1ty Z370 Professional Gaming i7, ASRock Z370 Taichi.

 

If you know better options in that price range, please feel free to write them down. I gotta say that I haven't found MSI boards in this range, so nothing against them. ASRock isn't a problem as well, since the board that died was from Ebay (new but opened) so I don't think it was their fault.

 

Physical stability is also important for me, since I'm planning to use my giant NH-D15 cooler. I'd also appreciate general brand experience, since there are so many different opinions on review sites about which manufacturer has better quality control or uses better components. ASRock and Asus seem to have the lowest RMA rates but as I said - I'd love to hear direct opinions from owners or "specialists"

[Guest]

Way back in time, I was REALLY happy with Asus boards. (M2N SLI Deluxe) Old AM2 board, which was popular for it's OC capabilities and am3+ semi official non-supported CPU bios version.

 

Currently using a used Gigabity board. Not that happy with it's BIOS/stability at higher offical overclocks, but when I just raise the turbo limit, all is fine. (and very stable) It's an FM2 board, so this info is also outdated.

 

MSI got a bad reputation for their AM4 boards/BIOS support. Not sure whats going on with MSI/Intel boards, but since they don't seem to take AM4 too serious, I wouldn't consider that brand for Intel either.

[IMhereNOW]

14 hours ago, Dutch-stoner said:

Way back in time, I was REALLY happy with Asus boards. (M2N SLI Deluxe) Old AM2 board, which was popular for it's OC capabilities and am3+ semi official non-supported CPU bios version.

 

Currently using a used Gigabity board. Not that happy with it's BIOS/stability at higher offical overclocks, but when I just raise the turbo limit, all is fine. (and very stable) It's an FM2 board, so this info is also outdated.

 

MSI got a bad reputation for their AM4 boards/BIOS support. Not sure whats going on with MSI/Intel boards, but since they don't seem to take AM4 too serious, I wouldn't consider that brand for Intel either.

Thanks for your answer. 

 

I've also heard a few words about Gigabyte BIOS issues. I could also find a video on Youtube where somebody had issues with double booting, that was an MSI X99. 

 

After all, I think your experience seems to be quite common and confirm the fact that Asus and ASRock have the lowest RMA numbers.

[Bhav]

One thing I can add is that I've got and started using my Asus ROG Strix Z370-I.

 

I had to sell my previous soundcard, a Soundblaster Z and intended to try out and use the onboard sound for now, and buy an external soundcard for recording later in the year.

 

Once I had it properly set up in the Supreme FX software, music output was incredible and indiscernible from my previous soundcard. The only issue is that the board is advertised as having, and is shown on the Asus website as having two installed 600 ohm op amps, yet when I plugged my headphones into the line out, the software only detects it as a 51 ohm output, and my front headphone port on the case as 52-101 ohms.

 

I've sent Asus support an email to ask about this, and how the onboard amps are meant to be able to be utilized, or if its even possible on the mini itx board despite it having two of these amps on its PCB. While reading about this, it seems that on the larger Asus boards, you can activate and use these 600 ohm amps, but doing so disables some sata ports, but nothing in the manual for my board mentions this. 

 

It would be dumb if they've included a pair of these amps on the mini boards and forgotten about making them actually usable. Other that that, the singular remaining issue with onboard sound for me is simply zero asio support. Even when I tried Asio4all drivers on my previous board, the input lag from my digital piano was horrendous, and simply having a £50ish internal or external soundcard with advertised built in Asio support enables lag free midi recording, so I'll still need to buy one when I want to record more stuff, Im actually currently waiting to move out and am going to soundproof set up one of the rooms for recording / gaming / VR use.

 

I also still have a pair of broken Creative Aurvana Platinum headphones to send back, but they have warranty until July so I got lazy and am using my Asus ROG Strix 'headset', which isnt even half as good intitially, but the Supreme FX software had a preset profile for them which vastly improved their sound quality. This seems to be the case with Asus headsets that they only work well with Asus sound drivers / apps. When plugged into my Creative card they were shit, hence why I bought the Aurvana Platinums.