Although Intel's 8th generation of CPUs launched a few months ago now, up until this point
we've only been able to buy Z370 motherboards.
While Z370 is required for overclocking K skews of Coffee Lake CPUs, it makes less sense
if you want to buy a non K CPU, like the i3 8100 that I've got here, as you're basically
forced into buying a board with a high end chipset.
At last this has finally changed, with the release of motherboards featuring the H370,
H310 and B360 chipsets there should finally be some better priced options available for
these sorts of 8th gen chips, and to kick things off we’re going to be checking out
the B360 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard from MSI.
My first impressions of the board are that it looks nice and clean, the whole thing is
a matte black and it’s got a carbon fiber texture on the various heatsinks.
There’s some RGB lighting towards the back, around the chipset cover, and on the right
hand side of the board.
There’s over 25 effects which can be controlled through MSI’s Mystic Light Sync software,
but you can always turn the lighting off if you prefer.
It’s an ATX board and comes in at 30.4cm by 24.3cm.
Starting with the IO, there’s a good old PS/2 port, two USB 2.0 Type-A ports, a DisplayPort
1.2 output, USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A and Type-C port, HDMI 1.4, four USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports,
gigabit ethernet, 5 audio jacks and optical SPDIF out.
There’s also red lighting for the ethernet port and two USB ports next to it when it’s
powered on, and the IO shield is MSI’s black and red.
At the center of the board is the LGA 1151 socket which supports Intel Coffee Lake based
CPUs, and I’m testing with an i3-8100 here, as I figured this would be a better match
for the board compared to my 8700K, which is what I’ve usually got in this PC, so
that’s the only reason the Fractal S36 is cooling it, which is completely overkill for
the 8100 of course, but I digress.
Next to the socket are the four RAM slots which run in dual channel and can support
up to 64GB of DDR4 memory at 2,666MHz, if you’re rich enough to afford that much at
today’s prices of course.
In my system I’m just running 2 8gb sticks.
The speed depends on the CPU, so i5 and i7 chips can run at 2,666MHz, while my i3 CPUs
like my 8100 here run at 2,400MHz.
As for the PCIe 3.0 slots from the top down there’s a 16x slot, 1x, 4x, and two more
1x slots, with support for two way crossfire, no mention of SLI though.
There’s two M.2 slots available, one above the PCIe slots which can take slightly longer
cards and one a bit lower.
They both use 4 PCIe lanes, however if the lower one is in use with a PCIe based SSD
the 3rd PCIe slot will not be useable, as there’s less PCIe lanes here when compared
with Z370.
Speaking of the differences with Z370, there’s also no RAID support here, which I think is
a limitation of B360 in general.
Along the top there’s an 8 pin power connector, CPU fan and pump headers.
Along the right hand side there’s 6 SATA 3 connectors, internal USB 3.1 Gen1 and USB
3.1 Gen 2 Type-C connectors, perfect if your cases front panel supports USB Type-C, 2 system
fan headers and the 24 pin power connector.
Finally along the bottom there’s the front panel audio, RGB headers, a couple more system
fan headers, TPM connector, a second USB 3.1 Gen1 connector and two USB 2.0 connectors.
To boot into the BIOS simply press the delete key during boot.
I found it fairly easy to navigate through and make changes, and I had no issues while
updating to the latest version noted here which is what I was testing with, and that
basically sums up my experience with the board, everything just worked for me as expected
with no issues.
As for the pricing I’ve been advised that the B360 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard comes
in at $209 AUD, so about $150 USD for my international viewers, but we pay more for stuff here in
Australia so it may be a bit less in the US.
As I’m making this video just before the release, I don’t currently have full details
on what other options will be available, however I expect there will be lower priced B360 boards,
the combination I’ve got here doesn’t really make the most sense, given the board
costs more than my i3 8100 CPU, however it’s what I’ve got to work with for the purposes
of this video.
You can get some pretty low end Z370 boards for slightly cheaper than this one, so although
I haven’t seen other B360, H370, or H310 boards that will be available, I get the feeling
that this one is in a bit of an odd position, and is likely one of the more premium options,
so if you’re looking for that budget board to go with a cheap Coffee Lake CPU this might
not be the best choice for you, however if you’re after some of the bells and whistles
without going all out with Z370 then it could be worth considering.
In any case, it’s great that there’s finally more option out there if you’re looking
at building an Intel 8th gen system, as you no longer have to go with a Z370 board.
Overall I thought the Gaming Pro Carbon was a nice board, it looks great and it’s got
some fairly good features, but we’ll have to see how it stacks up against others.
Let me know what you guys thought down in the comments, and leave a like if you’re
excited about these boards finally becoming available.
Thanks for watching, and don’t forget to subscribe for future tech videos like this
one.