The MSI Z370-A Pro Motherboard Review: Entry Level Business (And Pleasure)
by Joe Shields on September 11, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- MSI
- Coffee Lake
- Z370
- i7-8700K
- Z370A-Pro
- Pro Series
CPU Performance, Short Form
For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We leave the BIOS settings at default and memory at JEDEC for the supported frequency of the processor for these tests, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.
Rendering - Blender 2.78: link
For a render that has been around for what seems like ages, Blender is still a highly popular tool. We managed to wrap up a standard workload into the February 5 nightly build of Blender and measure the time it takes to render the first frame of the scene. Being one of the bigger open source tools out there, it means both AMD and Intel work actively to help improve the codebase, for better or for worse on their own/each other's microarchitecture.
Our Blender results for the Z370-A Pro land in the middle of the pack. Between all boards, there is a 4% difference from worst to first with the lion's share of results falling within margin of error. Nothing out of line here.
Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7: link
The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 1-2 minutes on high-end platforms.
In our next rendering test, POV-Ray, the Z370-A Pro scored 3384 points per second. The POV-Ray results are as tight as the results above with a majority being only 1-2% apart (removing the bookends).
Compression – WinRAR 5.4: link
Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30-second 720p videos.
In our compression tests, the Z370-A Pro managed a result of 37.5 seconds. This result falls in line with all of our Spectre and Meltdown patched PCs which is around 3 seconds faster thant the non-patched systems.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
Moving on to 7-Zip, the board performed as expected here again with results in the fat part of the bell curve.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz, and IPC win in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.
In 3DPM21, The Z370-A Pro 1801 Mop/s, placing it at the bottom of our results. That said, the scores of all Z370 and i7-8700K testing (minus the ASRock Z370 Gaming ITX/ac) were within 70 points (around 3%) of each other. The CPUs all ran the same speeds in this test, so again we see run variance size differences here.
Neuron Simulation - DigiCortex v1.20: link
The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates the activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up. Results are taken during the steady state period in a 32k neuron simulation and represented as a function of the ability to simulate in real time (1.000x equals real-time).
The DigiCortex results have the i7-8700K coming in at 1.15x of real-time simulation possible. This result places the Z370-A Pro right in with the other patched boards and results.
12 Comments
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PeachNCream - Tuesday, September 11, 2018 - link
Visual Inspection, 1st Paragraph - "Off the bat, users should be how MSI makes up the basics on a $110 motherboard:"That line needs help.
halcyon - Tuesday, September 11, 2018 - link
Really entry level indeed. My MSi Z370 Pro crapped at ~175W load, even with extra VRM cooling. Upgraded to more expensive Asrock Taichi Z370 and OC is so much more stable at higher loads.imaheadcase - Tuesday, September 11, 2018 - link
That doesn't sound like the motherboard at all.qlum - Tuesday, September 11, 2018 - link
about the vrm's being sufficient for overclocking while the system may not downright crash or throttle with your load does not mean they are sufficient to sustain such overclock for a user.the vrm may run very hot, enough so to seriously impect the lifespan of the components. the 'heatsinks' are not that great at dissipating the heat but have enough mass to keep the vrm cool enough for some time until it does overheat. often cases do not provide a lot of airflow over the vrm resulting in higher temperatures. Some workloads like blender can be very stressfull over a longer peroid of time
So basically just because it keeps running the overclock in your test does not really mean the motherboard is able to sustain such overclock for daily use.
timecop1818 - Tuesday, September 11, 2018 - link
daily use overclocking is fucking retarded anyway. the stuff is fast enough, if you want it faster buy something that will be faster, no need to run stuff out of spec.PeachNCream - Tuesday, September 11, 2018 - link
So much of this! Overclocking is interesting, maybe a learning experience, but of little practical use and doing so results in unnecessary expenses from a cascade of additional problems that must be mitigated with components that would otherwise never have been needed to begin with. It creates perceptions like these about VRM cooling or about the necessity of 1KW power supplies. Have fun with it, but if you're working on some sort of task that you can't afford to lose or redo, then don't overclock your computer.Death666Angel - Tuesday, September 11, 2018 - link
So where can I buy a 5.2GHz Intel CPU then? Apart from the fun of maxing out component, you can attain results with overclocking, that you can't buy "in spec" from Intel or AMD.mischlep - Tuesday, September 11, 2018 - link
"The rear IO consists of three video outputs (VGA, DVI-D, and HDMI) "This motherboard has Displayport, not HDMI.
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, September 11, 2018 - link
Thanks!gobaers - Tuesday, September 11, 2018 - link
I would posit that the blain black/brown scheme is exactly why this *would* win a beauty contest. I'm not a 11yo seeking flashing lights, I find most high end component design to be garish and off-putting.