Intel Z390 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Analyzed
by Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on October 8, 2018 10:53 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- MSI
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- EVGA
- Asus
- NZXT
- Supermicro
- Z390
ASUS TUF Z390 Plus Gaming
ASUS TUF Z390 Plus Gaming Wi-Fi
The TUF Z390 Plus Gaming and the Wi-Fi inclusive TUF Z390 Plus Gaming Wi-Fi are a pair of ATX sized motherboards which sits just below the TUF Z390 Pro Gaming in the current Z390 product stack from ASUS. The main difference in specification between the Pro Gaming and the Plus gaming is that this model has no support for two-way SLI due to bandwidth restrictions on the second full-length PCIe slot. The PCIe 3.0 slot configuration on the Z390 Plus Gaming and Wi-Fi enabled model is slightly different with two full-length PCIe 3.0 lanes with the top operating at x16 and the second at just x4; this is in addition to four PCIe 3.0 x1 slots.
Visually the boards have an all-black look with black rear panel covers and black heatsinks; a lot of blacks but this is offset with yellow colored TUF gaming accenting across the heatsinks and around the PCB of the socket area. The TUF Z390 Plus Gaming and Plus Gaming Wi-Fi have two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots with the bottom slot having a heatshield integrated on the board; only one of the M.2 slots has support for SATA drives. A total of six SATA ports is also present with support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays.
ASUS TUF Z390 Plus Gaming Wi-Fi rear panel (only difference is wireless support)
The rear panels on both models include two USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A and four USB 3.0 Type-A ports, with a pair of video outputs consisting of a DisplayPort and HDMI. Two separate PS/2 ports for a keyboard and mouse are included as well as an Intel I219V Gigabit powered LAN port and three 3.5 mm audio jacks taking their direction from a Realtek S1200A HD audio codec. The only difference between both models comes with a pair of antenna connectors provided by an Intel 9560 2x2 MU-MIMO Wave 2 Wi-Fi adapter.
The ASUS TUF Z390 Plus Gaming has an MSRP of (INSERT PRICE) and occupies the entry-level segment of the gaming based market. The more expensive TUF Z390 Plus Gaming Wi-Fi costs (INSERT PRICE) with the premium clearly attributed to the included Intel 9560 1.73 Gbps capable Wi-Fi adapter. Both look attractive at their respective price points and users have the option with or without Wi-Fi capability.
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di4b0liko - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link
Asus ROG STRIX Z390-F or asrock taichi ?pradeep.ramalingam - Friday, November 23, 2018 - link
Hi,I was wondering whether "MSI MPG Z390M Gaming Edge AC" with processor "Intel i5-9600K" will it work with onboard graphics (Intel® UHD Graphics 630) without a GPU from nvidia/amd?
Tigrou - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
"Z390 Motherboard Audio" panel in conclusion is incorrect. For example the MSI Z-390 A PRO has ALC892 but it is not in the list.Faslane - Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - link
Can you do a more in-depth overclocking guide for this board or is there one? if so may I please have a link to just a basic overclocking guide for this board? I have the board and loved it and I know I can go into the phantom gaming 4 app of course but I would rather do it at the BIOS level and save various profiles for testing but I'm a little new to some of the overclocking stuff but I do have a water cooled system with an 8th gen i5 9706 core so I know I can push it quite a bit :-)lb1966 - Thursday, April 11, 2019 - link
Just bought an IBuyPower with this MB init.Anybody able to hook it up to a home theater receiver?
7.1 sounds great on the headphones but I gotta take them off every once in while. Can I use the rear audio panel?
electricjedi - Thursday, January 9, 2020 - link
re: Asrock z390 gaming 4I know this does have a thunderbolt 5 pin header on the board, is this for thunderbolt 3?
Will the Asrock Thunderbolt 3 AIC R2.0 pci-e card work with this board?
or would I be smarter to get the GIGABYTE GC-ALPINE RIDGE (Rev 2.0) Thunderbolt3 Certified PCI-E Expansion card (since I know the z390 is "alpine ridge").
catminister - Saturday, November 28, 2020 - link
Also keep in mind that this board has no support for PCIe 4.0 or WIFI 6 802.11 AX in fact, it seems that Gigabyte abandons this board once purchased. If you want PCIe 4.0 to get the most out of the new Gen 4 NVMe M.2 drives or 802.11 AX support you are going to have to spend up and buy the X570 and a new CPU because socket 1151 is finished. A huge disappointment after recently upgrading to an Gigabyte Aorus Pro Wifi only this year...Turon - Saturday, December 25, 2021 - link
i can’t find the second ssd slot for the life of me, plz help.