ASUS ROG STRIX B360-F Gaming Review

Looking for a slice of ROG pie without burning a hole in your pocket? The B360-F Gaming motherboard is designed for Intel Coffee Lake and is reasonably priced.

Product on Review: ROG STRIX B360-F Gaming
Manufacturer: ASUS Republic of Gamers
Street Price: £115 GBP – $139 USD – $229 AUD

ASUS’ ROG motherboards are usually reserved for the company’s flagship models and can be considered as the la crème de la crème. So, when we were informed that the new value/mainstream B360-F Gaming was en route, we weren’t sure what to expect.

For those unaware, the new Intel B360 chipset is a cut-down version of the Intel Z370 chipset and is aimed squarely at those wanting basic Coffee Lake features, minus the overclocking potential and at a lower price-tag. So where would a ROG motherboard fit into this criteria?

The STRIX B360-F Gaming is a similar offering to that of its counterpart the STRIX Z370-F Gaming, albeit with less expansion options and at up to 40% cheaper. Sound interesting? Let’s check it out!

ROG on their STRIX B360-F Gaming

The distinctive sleek cuts across the ROG Strix heatsink are now accented with a futuristic cyber-text pattern, fusing multiple gaming cultures to create a unique identity for this generation. But it’s not all about arresting looks: the all-new ROG Strix motherboards exude material excellence, with a high-quality metal heatsink that adds a premium touch.

Intel H360 Chipset Overview

One of the fundamental things about Intel B360/H370 when we consider a comparison against Intel Z370 is the lack of overclocking support (even with a K-SKU processor).

Below is a comparison table between B360, H370 and Z370. Other things to note is that for storage, B360 doesn’t support RAID configurations but H370 does. There are also far less CPU PCI-E lanes available with B360 as well as less USB ports. See the comparison table below, courtesy of GIGABYTE.

Packaging & First Look

There are no surprises when it comes to the packaging for B360-F Gaming, ROG has kept to their usual format for the styling and presentation. The front details some of the standards/partnerships which are present and over on the reverse we get a diagram of the board with fundamental features pinpointed.

Included with this motherboard we get quite a decent selection of included accessories compared to other models we’ve reviewed. These bundled items include:

• User’s manual
• 4 x SATA 6Gb/s cable(s)
• 1 x M.2 Screw Package
• 1 x Supporting DVD
• 1 x CABLE TIE BLACK
• 1 x ROG Strix stickers
• 1 x ROG Door Hanger(s)
• 1 x Extension Cable for RGB strips (80 cm)
• 1 x 3D printing mount package

Again, most of these are standard items for any STRIX motherboard.

With B360-F Gaming out of the box we’re greeted by a good looking motherboard. The aesthetics are clean and tidy and there is a monochrome design used throughout. The subtle touches are appreciated – we especially like the typography printed across the PCB as it looks rather creative and unique.

This motherboard conforms to the standard ATX form factor: 30.5cm x 24.4cm with nine mounting holes.

Over the page we’ll explore B360-F Gaming’s features in more detail.

Closer Look

Boasting socket LGA 1151, B360-F Gaming is designed to work with Intel’s 8th Generation Processors aka Coffee Lake. Covering the VRMs there are two large gunmetal heatsinks and we see full implementation of Digi+. This board utilises a 10+2 digital phase design and there are black solid CAPs used throughout. Up on the top-edge of the motherboard there is a single 8-pin connector for CPU power.

There are a total of six fan headers on B360-F Gaming, with two CPU fan headers near the top of the board and a dedicated AIO_PUMP header near the top PCI Express slot (for use with liquid coolers like the Corsair Hydro Series).

Memory support arrives in the form of dual-channel DDR4 with four DIMM slots – up to 64GB and DDR4 2666/2400/2133MHz.

Immediately next to the memory slots we also have a Q-LED panel which helps to identify problem areas on bootup. There are LEDs for CPU, DRAM, VGA and BOOT.

Next to the 24-pin ATX we get a single USB 3.1 Gen1 header.

Moving along we have the SATA storage which consists of six SATA 6GB/s ports – rather than being stacked, each port is independent.

Behind this storage we have a large heatsink which sits over the B360 chip and bears the STRIX identifier. ROG has also made use of their 3D mounts on this board and we can see them around this lower region. For those with a 3D printer, ROG-specific objects can be mounted to the motherboard, allowing users to customise their system.

In the PCI Express section there is a lot going on – B360-F Gaming supplies us with the follow expansion slots:

2x PCI Express x16 Gen3 (16/4 modes)
4x PCI Express x1

The upper x16 slot also arrives with ASUS ‘SafeSlot’ – metal reinforcement and a wider overall slot allows the graphics card to stablise and is supported.

In between these slots there are two M.2 Type M slots for 2242/2280. The upper slot incorporates a gunmetal ROG cover with thermal strip and is PCI Express 3.0 x2 ready with support for NVMe. The reason we state “cover” rather than heatsink, is that this piece of metal is just a thin piece of steel without any thins and is therefore unlikely to act as a heatsink.

The lower M.2 slot is PCI Express 3.0 x4 ready and unlike the upper slot, supports Intel Optane memory.

Along the bottom of B360-F Gaming we also get a single RGB header (white) for use with RGB lighting strips within your chassis – this makes use of ASUS Aura software.

In the bottom left of the motherboard we have the audio components which are based on SupremeFX S1220A (A modified version of Realtec 1220). Premium Nichicon audio CAPs, dual OP amps, and electromagnetic shielding are also included – of which we’ve experienced on previous STRIX motherboards. This audio solution is one of the strongest you’ll find among vendors.

Usually the rear IO shield on the motherboard is something which is included within the accessories bundle but ROG has pre-mounted the IO shield in a bid to make it easier to install the board inside the chassis and we have to say, it is helpful. On this back panel we get the following connectivity:

1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port(s)
1 x DVI-D
1 x DisplayPort
1 x HDMI
1 x Gigabit LAN (via Intel i219-V controller)
1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (black)USB Type-CTM,
2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (red)Type-A
4 x USB 2.0
1 x Optical S/PDIF out
5 x Audio jack(s)

We’ve seen a few partners include USB 2.0 ports on the back panel of B360 motherboards and this is something we’d prefer to see replaced with USB 3.0 – though we do get a decent selection of ports to choose from.

Test Setup & Methodology

Test Setup

CPU Intel Core i7-8700K
Cooling Corsair H150i Pro RGB
Motherboard ASUS ROG STRIX B360-F Gaming
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz
Graphics AMD RX 480
Storage OCZ Vector 180 240GB SSD
PSU Corsair HX1000 80 Plus Platinum Certified PSU
Monitor AOC U2879VF
Capture Device Epiphan AV.iO 4K

Benchmarks

Cinebench R15 – CPU/OpenGL Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA – CPU & Memory benchmarks
POV-RAY – CPU benchmarks
TrueCrypt – CPU benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks & Memory
PCMark 8 – Home Suite & Photoshop
3DMark FireStrike – 3D Benchmark
Games – Civilization IV & Total War: WARHAMMER

Other Software

Temperature Analysis: Real Temp
Stress Testing Software: AIDA64 Stability Test
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z

Overclocking

Since the Intel B360 Express chipset isn’t designed for overclocking this section is omitted from our review.

Benchmarks: Power Consumption

It’s interesting to note the power consumption across all motherboards. Although they are using the Z370/B360 chipset, energy results can fluctuate between manufacturers due to the features and specifications that are integrated. First of all, for the idle tests the system is cold booted into Windows and no additional applications are executed – the watts are noted on the external energy monitor we use and then the system is loaded with 3DMark FireStrike – watts are again monitored for the duration of the test and the highest rated wattage result is then noted down. Below are the results of this energy test.

Benchmarks: Cinebench R15

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Life of Pi or Prometheus and many more.

Benchmarks: X264 HD

Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently.

Benchmarks: POV-RAY

Persistence of Vision Raytracer’s PovRay is a free and open source 3D animator application with versions for computers with different operating systems.

This product allows users to build their custom 3D worlds with excellent quality despite their computer’s hardware. It has adjustable options for levels of radiance, refraction, and reflection. Calculation time may vary depending on the computer model, but PovRay can adapt to many computer builds, and is supported by the open source community.

Benchmarks: TrueCrypt

TrueCrypt is a discontinued source-available freeware utility used for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file or encrypt a partition or (under Microsoft Windows except Windows 8 with GPT) the entire storage device (pre-boot authentication).

Benchmarks: AIDA64

AIDA64 Product Page

This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.

Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA

SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU and memory tests.

Benchmarks: PCMark 8 & PCMark 10

PCMark 8 combines performance benchmarking with battery life measurement and includes tests based on popular Adobe and Microsoft applications. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 will help you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs. It’s the complete PC performance benchmark for home and business.

Benchmarks: PCMark 8 Photoshop

The PCMark 8 Applications benchmark measures system performance using popular applications from the Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office. You can choose which tests to run based on the applications installed on your system. Each test automatically steps through a series of actions such as opening, editing and saving a file. The results are used to calculate the PCMark 8 Applications scores for the system.

Benchmarks: 3DMark FireStrike & TimeSpy

3DMark FireStrike Product Page

Fire Strike is our new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today. Fire Strike will only be available in the Windows editions of 3DMark initially.

Benchmarks: VRMark

VRMark Product Page

The performance requirements for VR games are much higher than for typical PC games. So if you’re thinking about buying an HTC Vive or an Oculus Rift, wouldn’t you like to know that your PC is ready for VR?

Benchmarks: ROT Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMER

It’s important for us to perform a number of game benchmarks as well as the synthetic tests because gamers will want to know if there are any significant benefits. So here we have two recent gaming titles.

Conclusion

Glaring straight into the eyes of the gamer, the STRIX B360-F Gaming is quite obviously a modified version of the Z370 variant.

This motherboard bears similarities to recent STRIX motherboards and we have to admit, there is a strong physical attraction. Aesthetics are clean, tidy and the layout is well-mapped out. As with any monochrome design, B360-F Gaming coordinates with other key system components very well thanks to the neutral theme.

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Comparing this B360 solution against its Z370 counterpart reveals less expansion slots but this is unlikely to affect the intended audience, B360 is all about delivering Coffee Lake capabilities for less and as such overclocking isn’t on the menu either. However, in our range of benchmarks this motherboard was able to deliver up some consistently good results at stock CPU frequency against rivals and we think it’s a solid contender in the mainstream/value segment.

STRIX B360-F GAming can be purchased for £115 GBP – $139 USD – $229 AUD, which should save system builders in the region of 30-40% against the fully-fledged Z370 option.

The STRIX B360-F Gaming is one of the better looking B360 motherboards out there and it arrives with a good array of features – giving gamers a slice of the ROG pie without costing the earth!

Pros
+ Sublime aesthetics
+ Good assortment of features
+ Dual M.2 slots
+ Audio solution is great
+ Plenty of fan headers
+ 3D mount spots

Cons
– Overkill phase design for non-OC board
– M.2 ‘heatsink’ is a thin metal cover

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