ASRock Fatal1ty B360 Gaming K4 ATX Motherboard Review: Stepping Down From H370

Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

How We Test

We picked our primary components (the CPU, graphics, and DRAM) based primarily upon a balance of performance and price. Intel’s Core i3-8350K offers four cores at 4GHz, and the fact that it’s unlocked hasn’t escaped us. It’s unlikely anyone will crack one of these locked platforms, but stranger things have happened. And we’d hate to be stuck with a locked processor if clock speed adjustments suddenly became available. We also chose the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti for its performance-to-price ratio. The two-fan cooler of MSI’s Gaming X version gives us reduced noise while still fitting within two slots.

As for memory, we decided to stick with RAM we had on-hand. G.Skill’s Ripjaws V 3200 barely carries any price premium over budget sticks, and it could allow overclocking if anyone were to unlock the platform. Our CPU supports DDR4-2400 at both 9x 133MHz and 12x 100MHz settings, and if anyone ever figures out how to fool the board into using the higher 12x multiplier with the higher 133MHz base clock, the resulting 1600MHz frequency would get us to DDR4-3200.

The Core i3-8350k doesn't include a cooler, so we used a Noctua NH-U12 because it was handily close to our test bench.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
SoundIntegrated HD Audio
NetworkIntegrated Gigabit Networking
Graphics DriverGeForce 382.53

Comparison Products

The closest competitor to ASRock's Fatal1ty B360 Gaming K4 is its own Fatal1ty H370 Performance. Gigabyte's higher-model H370 Aorus Gaming 3 brings some brand variety into the mix, and MSI's B360M Mortar presents the B360 chipset at a far lower price.

Benchmark Settings

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Synthetic Benchmarks & Settings
PCMark 8Version 2.7.613 Home, Creative, Work, Storage, Applications (Adobe & Microsoft)
3DMark 13Version 4.47.597.0 Skydiver, Firestrike, Firestrike Extreme Default Presets
SiSoftware SandraVersion 2016.03.22.21 CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Cryptography, Memory Bandwidth
DiskSPD4K Random Read, 4K Random Write 128k Sequential Read, 128k Sequential Write
Cinebench R15Build RC83328DEMO OpenGL Benchmark
CompuBenchVersion 1.5.8 Face Detection, Optical Flow, Ocean Surface, Ray Tracing
Application Tests & Settings
LAME MP3Version 3.98.3 Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160 Kb/s)
HandBrake CLIVersion: 0.9.9 Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4k mkv to x265 mp4
BlenderVersion 2.68a BMW 27 CPU Render Benchmark, BMW 27 GPU Render Benchmark
7-ZipVersion 16.02 THG-Workload (7.6GB) to .7z, command-line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=9"
Adobe After Effects CCRelease 2015.3.0, Version 13.8.0.144 PCMark-driven routine
Adobe Photoshop CCRelease 2015.5.0. 20160603.r.88 x64 PCMark-driven routine (light and heavy)
Adobe InDesign CCRelease 2015.4, Build 11.4.0.90 x64 PCMark-driven routine
Adobe IllustratorRelease 2015.3.0, Version 20.0.0 (64-bit) PCMark-driven routine
Game Tests & Settings
Ashes of the SingularityVersion 1.31.21360 High Preset - 1920x1080, Mid Shadow Quality, 1x MSAA Crazy Preset - 1920x1080, High Shadow Quality, 2x MSAA
F1 20152015 Season, Abu Dhabi Track, Rain Medium Preset, No AF Ultra High Preset, 16x AF
Metro Last Light ReduxVersion 3.00 x64 High Quality, 1920x1080, High Tesselation, 16x AF Very High Quality, 1920x1080, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF
The Talos PrincipleVersion 267252 Medium Preset, High Quality, High Tesselation, 4x AF Ultra Preset, Very High Quality, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF

MORE: Best Motherboards

MORE: How To Choose A Motherboard

MORE: All Motherboard Content

Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
  • Co BIY
    With only $5 difference between them it seems that it's a waste for Intel to have multiple chipsets so close in features.
    Reply