Gigabyte Z370N WiFi Motherboard Review

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The first Mini-ITX motherboard in our Z370 review series, Gigabyte’s Z370N WiFi is forced to compete against its larger counterparts in both performance and overclocking. Fortunately, the smaller board also has a lower price that could give it a value lead.

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SoundIntegrated HD Audio
NetworkIntegrated Gigabit Networking
Graphics DriverGeForce 382.53

Back during the X299 launch, we upgraded our test bed to handle the tremendous heat produced by the Core i9-7900X. Our award-winning Fractal Design S24 liquid cooler system sample serves the same purpose for the newer, lower heat Core i7-8700K. Cooler Master’s HAF-XB provides an optimal layout to blow the Celsius S24’s fans sufficiently over each motherboard’s voltage regulator.

Comparison Products

Benchmark Settings

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Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings
PCMark 8Version 2.7.613Home, Creative, Work, Storage, Applications (Adobe & Microsoft)
3DMark 13Version 4.47.597.0Skydiver, Firestrike, Firestrike Extreme Default Presets
SiSoftware SandraVersion 2016.03.22.21CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Cryptography, Memory Bandwidth
DiskSPD4k Random Read, 4k Random Write128k Sequential Read, 128k Sequential Write
Cinebench R15Build RC83328DEMOOpenGL Benchmark
CompuBenchVersion 1.5.8Face Detection, Optical Flow, Ocean Surface, Ray Tracing
Application Tests and Settings
LAME MP3Version 3.98.3Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160 Kb/s)
HandBrake CLIVersion: 0.9.9Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19 GB 4k mkv to x265 mp4
BlenderVersion 2.68aBMW 27 CPU Render Benchmark, BMW 27 GPU Render Benchmark
7-ZipVersion 16.02THG-Workload (7.6 GB) to .7z, command line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=9"
Adobe After Effects CCRelease 2015.3.0, Version 13.8.0.144PCMark driven routine
Adobe Photoshop CCRelease 2015.5.0. 20160603.r.88 x64PCMark driven routine (light and heavy)
Adobe InDesign CCRelease 2015.4, Build 11.4.0.90 x64PCMark driven routine
Adobe IllustratorRelease 2015.3.0, Version 20.0.0 (64-bit)PCMark driven routine
Game Tests and Settings
Ashes of SingularityVersion 1.31.21360High Preset - 1920x1080, Mid Shadow Quality, 1x MSAACrazy Preset - 1920x1090, High Shadow Quality, 2x MSAA
F1 20152015 Season, Abu Dhabi Track, RainMedium Preset, No AFxUltra High Preset, 16x AF
Metro Last Light ReduxVersion 3.00 x64High Quality, 1920x1080, High Tesselation, 16x AFVery High Quality, 1920x1080, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF
The Talos PrincipleVersion 267252Medium Preset, High Quality, High Tesselation, 4x AFUltra Preset, VeryHigh Quality, VeryHigh Tesselation, 16x AF

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Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
  • Dark Lord of Tech
    Nice review , thanks!
    Reply
  • SpAwNtoHell
    Nice review, but quite disaponted of the above 1.25v oc. Mainstream z170 270 z370 do much better there. Otherwise i am not sure it can be faulted in any way, and oc headroom is not really a fault as in a itx system is hard ussually to oc do to cooling.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    20478994 said:
    Nice review, but quite disaponted of the above 1.25v oc. Mainstream z170 270 z370 do much better there. Otherwise i am not sure it can be faulted in any way, and oc headroom is not really a fault as in a itx system is hard ussually to oc do to cooling.
    There's one core out of six on this CPU that maxes out at somewhere between 4.8 and 4.9 GHz and gets flaky at more than 1.35V or less than 1.295V when running those speeds. The other cores will do 4.8 at 1.25V and 5.0 at 1.30V, but those don't count if we're looking for 100% stability at 100% load.

    Reply
  • Onus
    I thought it was a fair review. It looks like Gigabyte almost got it right, but not quite. One would think that manufacturers would know better than to release anomalous products that are "almost" excellent, but trip themselves up. Biostar does this too. Asus wouldn't send review samples, so I'm really liking MSI these days, although it also seems hard to go wrong with ASRock.
    Reply
  • Dark Lord of Tech
    The Z370 Asrock Extreme 4 , I put in my sons XMAS build is a great value among the Z370 boards.
    Reply
  • excalibur1814
    Virus checker just jumped to life after clicking to this page. Sort out your adverts!! There's far too many. Yes.. on the living room computer I don't block adverts and why should I!
    Reply
  • SpAwNtoHell
    20479407 said:
    I thought it was a fair review. It looks like Gigabyte almost got it right, but not quite. One would think that manufacturers would know better than to release anomalous products that are "almost" excellent, but trip themselves up. Biostar does this too. Asus wouldn't send review samples, so I'm really liking MSI these days, although it also seems hard to go wrong with ASRock.

    Quiete agree i am some sort of ""bitch"" but somehow gigabyte managed to fall out of my builds for a reason or to and seems like looking back all systems ive done for last 5 years are mostly asus msi mb with asrock here and there but as you said asrock is a solid choice.
    Reply
  • Lutfij
    This article/review was a good read for me! Also it was a good thing to read about the ram's rank and Intel's latest platform. Some friend's were interested on jumping the gun with this board.

    IMHO, I think Gigabyte lack in the BIOS department but ASRock was lower down that order. In any case if things are ironed out and that they learn from their mistakes. The next batch of reviews for Gigabyte boards would be well.
    Reply