ECS Z370 Lightsaber Motherboard Review

CPU Cooler Fit and Included Accessories

CPU Cooler Fit

To test the amount of space surrounding the CPU socket, we mounted the Noctua NH-D15 cooler to the CPU socket. This behemoth CPU air cooler sports a dual fan construction and two huge vertical cooling towers.

When oriented in its default configuration with air blown towards the rear panel of the case, the Noctua cooler fits well into the CPU socket area of the Z370 Lightsaber motherboard. The cooler appears to come close to contacting the memory when seating in the uppermost socket, but there is more than sufficient room between the front of the cooler's heat pipes and the memory's surface. The spacing between the CPU socket area and the primary PCIe x16 slot is most than sufficient to support both the larger cooler and a full sized card in the primary PCIe x16 slot, thnaks in part to the placement of the M.2 slot by the CPU socket on the board's surface.

The Noctua hold down mechanism is large enough to qualify the socket space for use with the majority of mount methods included with a CPU cooler. The Noctua mount fits well to the CPU socket with no tight areas or contact points evident between it and the on board capacitors, chokes, VRM heat sinks, or upper memory slots.

The cooler's backplate rests on the socket backplate, minimizing the risk of direct board contact. Further, there is no risk of any back plate to board component contact even with a cooler back plate that extends further out than the Noctua plate.

Included Accessories

The Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC motherboard comes with all the necessary components to get the board up and running as well as some accessories to make building the system easier.

The board's motherboard manual is of a minimalistic design, describing the integrated features to some extent in multiple languages. Also included is a driver DVD with all necessary hardware drivers and Window's utilities.

The board's rear panel shield is an aluminum plate with a matte black overlay. The port identifying text and icons are printed in white text on its surface making for easy reading under most good lighting conditions.

ECS included two black 6Gb/s rated SATA cables for use with the integrated port. The cables have integrated port locks and a straight connectors.