Published: April 3, 2018 | Source: ASUS | Author: Tom Logan

ASUS ROG Strix B360 F Gaming and H370 Pro TUF Review

Conclusion

Mid-range motherboards used to mean that you were having to make serious concessions to get them in at a price point affordable to the masses. We generally dreamt of high end ones, and then purchased the closest approximation we could get within budget. As Intel have placed more and more of the controllers and hardware connectivity options onto the chipsets themselves, so both the B360 and H370 offer an awful lot for a relatively modest investment.

The both also seem to be aimed at different audiences.

There is one thing that they both have in common and is worth noting if you’ve been following along the path of the recent Intel launches. Both the TUF and the Strix have great heatsinks guaranteeing that you’ll never remotely get thermally throttled because the VRMs are overheating. We ran them with the best possible 8th Generation CPU, the i7-8700K, and never had a single issue. Given that this is as stern a test as they will receive and the majority of people will run i5s or i3s in these motherboards it is reassuring to know that you wont have a single problem.

The Strix B360-F Gaming is very much the gamer designed motherboard of the two. The PCB is loud and brash, the RGB lighting is a favourite amongst the modern set, and perhaps best of all if you only look at it from the top PCI Express slot upwards it could pretend to be almost any motherboard you wish. Although the performance was a small shade below the H370 when looked at as a whole, we wouldn’t say that the B360 was underpowered. In fact even compared to many of the Z370s it’s clear that there is plenty of grunt for the majority of tasks you’ll ask of it, and the only times it ever really looked tailed off at the rear were tests which placed a heavy responsibility on the memory bandwidth, one area in which the Z370 offerings absolutely shine. With lots of storage slots and good performance the B360-F would make the perfect underpinnings of a gaming system and wins our OC3D Gamers Choice Award.

On the other side of the coin there is the H370-Pro TUF. Not on the other side because of its capabilities which are even more impressive than the Strix, but in the design ethos behind them. The Strix is for gamers, the TUF is for those who want maximum reliability and the contentment of knowing it will probably last forever. The aesthetics aren’t quite our cup of tea, neither committing hard enough to the TUF ideology (no Thermal Armor) not being plain enough to be able to be honed to your personal taste. Looks wise we’d definitely take the Strix with the bigger logo, more imposing heatsink and horizontal SATA ports. However, the H370 chipset has a few more strings to its bow in terms of connectivity, and if there ever was a little bit of a performance gap between the two ASUS motherboards it usually came down in favour of the TUF. So the Strix is for the gamer, and the TUF is for the people who want the maximum bang for their buck in a more well-rounded package, albeit one that is cosmetically less impressive.

ASUS Strix B360-F

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