ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming Motherboard Review

Synthetic Benchmarks

3DMark Firestrike

For a mini-ITX motherboard, I was expecting performance to be a little lower. However, the chunky VRM hardware on the I Gaming didn’t slow it down in terms of performance at stock or while overclocking. It set our second highest score at stock, and a high score while overclocked. I retested, it scored high three times in a row and I suspect it may be a healthy BIOS that’s helping it keep that lead. Perhaps the other Z370 boards will catch up with a few updates.

Stock

Overclocked

Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme

Stock performance was superb, killing it compared to the other Z370 motherboards and it remained competitive while overclocked too. Already it’s shaping up to be a good high-performance motherboard.

Stock

Overclocked

PCMark 10 Express

The GPU throughput was clearly great, and that continued into PCMark 10, with our third highest score so far at stock, and our second fastest while overclocked. Clearly, those 6-core Intel CPUs are pulling their weight nicely.

Stock

Overclocked

WPrime 32M and 1024M

The new Intel Core i7-8700K is no slouch and sets some impressive times. The Mini-ITX board didn’t set the fastest, but it’s certainly in the ballpark with other Z370 motherboards at stock clocks. However, once overclocked, it was the fastest board, albeit by a small margin.

Stock

Overclocked

Cinebench R15

Again, the Cinebench scores are right where we expected them to be. The bigger motherboards pulled slightly ahead, but in the real world, you likely wouldn’t notice a difference.

Stock

Overclocked

Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K

Another solid score here, with all the Z370 boards scoring about the same. Clearly being mini-ITX isn’t a problem for this board, and it’s keeping a solid pace so far.

Stock

Overclocked