Good baseline Z370 ATX motherboard?

[Twoddle]

Don't care about flashy lighting or LEDs on the board, once it's in the case who cares? Just want the basics, ethernet, couple of SATA ports, USB 3, audio, I hear M.2 is the next thing, and some overclocking capabilities nothing extreme. VRMs what's that in layman terms?

Been scanning youtube reviews and the only thing more expensive motherboards seem to have is lighting on the board and bigger heat sinks. Seems ASUS Prime is getting a bad rap on this forum but gets top reviews and 5 stars everywhere I look.

Gonna try it with an i5-8600K using the integrated graphics before I choose a discrete GPU, will that be enough to play HotS and Hearthstone for the time being?

[Illuman]

I'd at very least buy a 1050ti, if those are your most intensive games. The basic asrock board is very good.

[Denpepe]

For Z370 ASrock and Gigabyte seem to be the better options this time around. ASrock is a bit more basic with soft- and bloatware then some of the bigger names but is good bang for your buck.

Never used Gigabyte so no idea about those, currently using ASrock X299 board and pretty happy with it.

something like https://pcpartpicker.com/product/QNX...-z370-extreme4 should be able to do what you want.

[Buckrodgers]

I just built a rig last weekend and am using the Z370 Aorus Gaming 7 board. It seems to be getting the best reviews over the past few months.

What I like:

• The smart fan capability - 6 temp sensors on board, you have 5 fan/water pump connectors if needed that are hybrid so you can use PWM or Voltage mode fans
• 2 PCIe Armor slots - the peace of mind of a reinforced socket/slot.
• 2 M.2 slots for on board SSD
• Nice clearance on the board - I installed the large phanteks cpu cooler with plenty of clearance for my corsair memory
• RGB - I know you don't care for the light show, but RGB board with a RGB controller to sync up fans/LED lighting is a nice adder
• Gigabytes app center - easy app to manage your motherboard - overclocking, RGB, temps,etc

I'm using a an i5-8600k in the board and overclocking to 4.7Ghz. My new PC can easily play Hearthstone and I'm comfortably above 90fps on WoW at all times.

[Cyrops]

Don't care about flashy lighting or LEDs on the board, once it's in the case who cares? Just want the basics, ethernet, couple of SATA ports, USB 3, audio, I hear M.2 is the next thing, and some overclocking capabilities nothing extreme. VRMs what's that in layman terms?

Been scanning youtube reviews and the only thing more expensive motherboards seem to have is lighting on the board and bigger heat sinks. Seems ASUS Prime is getting a bad rap on this forum but gets top reviews and 5 stars everywhere I look.

Gonna try it with an i5-8600K using the integrated graphics before I choose a discrete GPU, will that be enough to play HotS and Hearthstone for the time being?

z370's are expensive, starting at 94$ cheapest mobo.
How heavy are you planning to OC? that might influence your choices. I did build PC recently with MSI Z370-A PRO, it's 2nd cheapest z370 chip mobo.

As for your plans to play hots and hearthstone, can't say for sure how well hots will perform, but hearthstone won't have any problems.

[Illuman]

I just built a rig last weekend and am using the Z370 Aorus Gaming 7 board. It seems to be getting the best reviews over the past few months.

What I like:

• The smart fan capability - 6 temp sensors on board, you have 5 fan/water pump connectors if needed that are hybrid so you can use PWM or Voltage mode fans
• 2 PCIe Armor slots - the peace of mind of a reinforced socket/slot.
• 2 M.2 slots for on board SSD
• Nice clearance on the board - I installed the large phanteks cpu cooler with plenty of clearance for my corsair memory
• RGB - I know you don't care for the light show, but RGB board with a RGB controller to sync up fans/LED lighting is a nice adder
• Gigabytes app center - easy app to manage your motherboard - overclocking, RGB, temps,etc

I'm using a an i5-8600k in the board and overclocking to 4.7Ghz. My new PC can easily play Hearthstone and I'm comfortably above 90fps on WoW at all times.

Nitpicking, I just do not understand why they did black/orange scheme on the board, but then tout rgb. Typically the board should be a neutral scheme

[Twoddle]

Thanks all, went for the Asrock Z370 Pro4 and built it today inside my current case. Haven't done any overclocking yet but seems there's loads of room for that and yeah once the graphics drivers are installed it handles Hearthstone just fine, HotS is fine too if you turn the shader settings to low. HotS tooltips tell you what each setting uses (either CPU or GPU) so you can turn all the CPU intensive stuff to high and the GPU stuff to low or off and get constant 60Hz. It also means I don't have to fork out for a graphics card for the time being.

10 times better than my old system.

[Kagthul]

Thanks all, went for the Asrock Z370 Pro4 and built it today inside my current case. Haven't done any overclocking yet but seems there's loads of room for that and yeah once the graphics drivers are installed it handles Hearthstone just fine, HotS is fine too if you turn the shader settings to low. HotS tooltips tell you what each setting uses (either CPU or GPU) so you can turn all the CPU intensive stuff to high and the GPU stuff to low or off and get constant 60Hz. It also means I don't have to fork out for a graphics card for the time being.

10 times better than my old system.

Kf you do decide to grab a GPU, just grab a 1050 or RX 460 or even an older 750Ti or something. That way you arent super invested and have a spare GPU just in case.