ASUS ROG Strix Z370-E Gaming Motherboard Review

ATTO Disk Benchmark

The ATTO disk benchmark is a Windows-based utility for testing storage performance of any storage drive or controller. We use the default benchmark setup.

M.2 PCIe Performance

For M.2 testing we use a Toshiba OCZ RD400 256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD.

M.2 performance continues to max out the drive, as with Z270. In terms of M.2 cooling we were unable to gather M.2 temperature data during our benchmarking since the Toshiba OCZ RD400 suffered a hardware failure before the testing completed its final run. However, the drive had not throttled at any stage during testing which had looked promising.

USB Performance

We test USB 3.0 and 3.1 performance using a pair of Transcend SSD370S 512GB SSDs in RAID 0 connected to an Icy Box RD2253-U31 2-bay USB 3.1 enclosure powered by an ASMedia ASM1352R controller.

USB 3.0 and 3.1 performance is typical and revealed no anomalies, we saw similar numbers on Z270.

SATA 6Gbps Performance

For SATA 6Gbps testing we use an OCZ Trion 150 480GB SSD.

SATA, like USB, is very similar to Z270.

Audio

Rightmark Audio Analyser is a freeware benchmarking utility designed to objectively test the performance characteristics of audio solutions. We setup a line-in line-out loop and execute the record/playback test before generating the results report you see below. A sampling mode of 24-bit, 192 kHz is tested where available. If unavailable the closest alternative operating mode available is used and clearly marked.

Audio performance is marked as Very Good overall with 6 Excellent, 1 Very Good and 1Good. ASUS scored well using the Realtek ALC1220 codec, which has been a mainstay of Z270, X299, X370, X399 and other high-end motherboards for a while now. The MSI motherboard came out narrowly ahead in our testing but there's very little to distinguish between the two.

Become a Patron!