Z370 or H370 motherboard?

Ponster

So it's time to upgrade the 'ol gaming PC. While it still do the job in terms of getting me the FPS that I need I've recently made some investments that means that my CPU has become the bottleneck and so it's time to replace the core components.

I currently have an i5 3570k with 16Gb DDR3 @ 933Mhz. My goal is to upgrade to an i5 8600. I'm really not that interested in o/c and I never bothered overclocking with my current chip until recently.

So an 8th generation CPU will require a new motherboard. The choice seems to be between a Z370 or H370 but I'm as not buying a K chip, don't intend on overclocking memory and will never have need of SLI, I don't see the need to get the Z-series board. I'd normally just throw money at these things and get a high-tier motherboard without really looking to see if I need the features or not but in this case I don't see the need to spend extra $$$ on features that I'll never need (included in that list is RGB lights).

So I guess the question is, is there another reason for the Z370 board that I'm not seeing? I'll most likely keep this for the next 4 years or so when I'll most likely have to change m/b again when I upgrade again so getting the Z board probably wouldn't be future-proofing me against anything.

My purchase will be:
i5-8600
Gigabyte H370 AORUS Gaming 3
Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4 2666 MHz
Samsung 500GB EVO PCI Express 3.0 NVMe

Added to my existing:
ZOTAC 1070GTX
Dell S2716DG ([font=Arial, sans-serif]2560 x 1440 @ 144Hz)[/font]

No point getting the Z370 if you're not getting a K chip.

K.O.Kiki

https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3277-intel-b360-vs-z370-chipset-differences-benchmark-h370

Anyone who doesn’t care about these options and intends on using a single-GPU, and won’t need more than 24 HSIO lanes, should consider B360 chipset motherboards. The savings and value of B360 boards can be worthwhile (assuming a non-garbage-tier board) for CPUs akin to the Intel i5-8400.

That’s really all there is to it. It’s as simple as this: Are you overclocking? If yes, buy Z370. If no, it’s sort of irrelevant insofar as outright performance of the CPU. Memory limitations can have some impact, yes, but not typically greater than 5-8%. The required money for Z-series or higher-frequency memory parts exceeds the money required for CPU and GPU upgrades that’d outstrip the memory and platform upgrade.

tl;dr
Buy a mid-range B360 board.

CruelCoin

Can i presume that if i were to get a 8700k, i would be wanting to put it into a Z370?

CruelCoin

CruelCoin wrote: »

Can i presume that if i were to get a 8700k, i would be wanting to put it into a Z370?

Yup.

Ponster

CruelCoin wrote: »

Can i presume that if i were to get a 8700k, i would be wanting to put it into a Z370?

Yeah. K-series means you need a Z-series board in order to take advantage of overclocking.

Thanks for the replies guys. A mid-range B360 is all I need really.