You don’t get much of the former here, other than a
reinforced PCIe bracket for your graphics card, but
you do get uprated chokes, capacitors and
MOSFETs, which in theory should make this board a
little more stable and longer-lasting than some.
The black and yellow TUF colour scheme used
throughout, including painted yellow highlights and
yellow lighting in the PCB itself. This shines through
the TUF GAMING logo in the top right of the board.
Round the back, the rear I/O is an interesting
mix as you get eight conventional USB ports (two
USB 2.0, four USB 3.0 and two USB 3.1) but you
don’t get a dedicated USB Type-C input.
As a Z370 board, this one does offer
overclocking, and we managed to push our 8700K
to 4.9GHz without much trouble. The performance
gains in gaming aren’t particularly massive but you
get a nice boost in CPU-limited tasks.
The higher price of this board gets
you a little extra protection but most
users can safely buy a cheaper board.Itisn’tthemostalluringdevice,asithasneitherthe
outlandish look of some boards nor the more muted
design of modest offerings. Still, it offers colour
options thanks to an RGB backlit logo on the chipset
heatsink and RGB lighting headers.
There are plenty of other extras. The fan headers
can detect what sort of device – PWM fan, DC fan or
pump – is connected so you can easily control your
cooling setup. The headers also offer the ability to
switch fans off if the system is cool enough.
The labelling on most of the headers is also
clearer than other boards in this test. It arguably
makes the board look cluttered, but the writing’s
small enough you’ll hardly notice in most builds.
One thing we’re less keen on is the UEFI of this
board. Mouse movement is slow and unresponsive
and the layout is a bit clunky. Still, the Z370 chipset
showed what it can do and we got our CPU
overclocked to 4.9GHz without issue.
It’s a little lacking in design, but it’s
good value and has a nice feature set.3 4
75 % 80 %
3ASUS TUF Z370-PRO GAMING
GIGABYTE Z370 AORUS
GAMING K3www.gigabyte.com£117
With its TUF-branded products, Asus aims to prioritise
longevity. This includes additions such as the PCB having
a protective cover, as well as subtle extras like using
components that have greater temperature tolerance.
The Gaming K3 is among the lower-tier options in
Gigabyte’s Z370 motherboard offerings, however it still
has several key niceties along with rock-solid stability
and performance.