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Vittra

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The standards of quality for mosfets/chokes/capacitors has changed a lot in the last 7-10 years, along with digitization of VRMs providing better configuration and regulation of power delivery over old analog methods.

As such, within the current Z370 Asus lineup the Prime Z370-A actually represents the baseline of what you should be getting if you want to push overclocks. I don't see why it wouldn't be capable of a stable 5.0ghz overclock, provided your chip is capable. Beyond that could be another matter though. You'd have to move up to a real ROG board to see any significant difference.

Keep in mind the "Strix ROG" are not true ROG boards - they are a "Gaming" lineup that sits above the new budget-oriented "TUF Gaming" lineup, but still fall below real ROG. The "Prime" lineup is separate, but it looks like the Z370-P would be low-mid "Strix ROG" equivalent, with Z370-A sitting between STRIX Rog and true ROG.

I find the new naming conventions pointlessly confusing over the old Budget ---> A --> Pro --> Deluxe setup, with ROG being a separate entity and providing different featuresets and not necessarily better to the Pro/Deluxe, up until the flagship models which were "best in class" so to speak.

I'd like to see Asus publish the specific components in use though, like Asrock has. Without actually having the board and inspecting components you're left to guess based on advertising material what exactly is being used.
 

486

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Nov 7, 2008
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614
Go Intel 6-core by getting cheaper MB and RAM:

CPU: Intel - Core i5-8600K Processor ($319.99 @ Mike's)
Motherboard: MSI Z370-A PRO ATX LGA1151 Motherboard ($144.99 @ Mike's)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory ($189.99 @ CC)
Storage: Samsung - 960 EVO 250GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($169.99 @ Memory Express)
Total: $824.96

Cheaper and faster. You are welcome.
 
Last edited:

Dwayne

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The standards of quality for mosfets/chokes/capacitors has changed a lot in the last 7-10 years, along with digitization of VRMs providing better configuration and regulation of power delivery over old analog methods.

As such, within the current Z370 Asus lineup the Prime Z370-A actually represents the baseline of what you should be getting if you want to push overclocks. I don't see why it wouldn't be capable of a stable 5.0ghz overclock, provided your chip is capable. Beyond that could be another matter though. You'd have to move up to a real ROG board to see any significant difference.

Keep in mind the "Strix ROG" are not true ROG boards - they are a "Gaming" lineup that sits above the new budget-oriented "TUF Gaming" lineup, but still fall below real ROG. The "Prime" lineup is separate, but it looks like the Z370-P would be low-mid "Strix ROG" equivalent, with Z370-A sitting between STRIX Rog and true ROG.

I find the new naming conventions pointlessly confusing over the old Budget ---> A --> Pro --> Deluxe setup, with ROG being a separate entity and providing different featuresets and not necessarily better to the Pro/Deluxe, up until the flagship models which were "best in class" so to speak.

I'd like to see Asus publish the specific components in use though, like Asrock has. Without actually having the board and inspecting components you're left to guess based on advertising material what exactly is being used.

You are right about the confusion with the new Asus branding. I did find a very extensive thread on VRMs at the Overclocker.net forum. They also had a link to a German site that has all the VRM/Power setups for different chipsets and motherboards. There is a lot of stuff out there to find and read!

Z370 / Z390 VRM Discussion Thread

https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f12/lga-1151-mainboard-vrm-liste-1175784.html#z370

According to the info on the German website the VRM/Power setup on the Asus Prime A, the ROG E Gaming and the ROG F Gaming are all the exact same. In my mind one of the important things to look for now are heatsinks on the MOSFETs. Asus has added a bracket to install a small 40 or 50 mm fan as well, for those who want it, to add active cooling too.

I love the disclaimer that someone at Overclockers wrote on the VRM thread:

DISCLAIMER

Been browsing around and it seems casual people are taking this VRM thread on these boards a bit too seriously for non-delid chips. (low) Midrange or better for those people would be fine.

Dear guest readers: this is OCN, we use our machines for folding, BOINC, Cinema4d (i.e. not just cinebench for "lols"), and 14+ day uptime 24/7 running competitions maxed out on AvX instructionsets, not playing 1080p games on Ultra (GPU bound) 60fps two hours... smile.gif


Well then :)
 

fubar

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Jan 18, 2012
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Based on those two builds, its a toss up, with slight lean towards the Intel. If you want something different, go for the AMD, otherwise the Intel is slightly better for your use-case.

Do note the VRM on the Prime Z370-A is pretty meh - I wouldn't feel comfortable taking it past 4.6GHz, even with just the i3-8350K
Are you talking to me? Is there any source/site that has checked/compared VRM on Intel's Coffee Lake motherboards and Ryzen motherboards? I think some tests were done on previous generations (of Intel's Kaby Lake?)?

Someone already did at Hardware Unboxed.
Where? Link?

Are you talking about Youtube videos?
 

fubar

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Jan 18, 2012
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P.S. The comparisons I came across seemed to conclude, Coffee Lake beats Ryzen (still) on single core but on multi-core operations, Ryzen can beat Coffee Lake (comparative cpu) and various tasks, they trade performance gains?

I was hoping to find at least one test that indicates a comparison between power consumption and temperature at loads or levels when really stressing the cpu. I was just curious. It looked like Coffee Lake was a little better than Kaby Lake with efficiency so challenging Ryzen but I'm not certain.
 

MARSTG

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