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
ASRock Z390 Pro4 & Z390M Pro4
The ASRock Z390 Pro 4 and Z390M Pro 4 are so similar in terms specification, design and aesthetic, the only real core differences between both models are the form factor, PCIe layout including M.2 compatibility and through the rear panel. Both Z390 Pro4 boards feature a black PCB with a similar grey colored patterning to the Z390 Phantom Gaming 4 model. Neither board has a rear panel cover and both also disregard a power delivery heatsink for the SoC sections; both boards seemingly incorporate the same 10-phase power delivery as per ASRock's marketing resources. Both models also include a total of four 4-pin fan headers, with the Z390 Pro4 offering one extra PCIe 3.0 x1 slot than the smaller mATX version.
ASRock Z390 Pro4 (left) and ASRock Z390M Pro4 (right)
On the ATX sized Z390 Pro4 and maTX Z390M Pro4, there are two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots with the top slot running at x16 and the bottom one at x4; this means two-way CrossFire is supported but no dice on SLI I'm afraid. The primary difference in PCIe which is a consequence to jumping from ATX to mATX is the Z390 Pro4 has three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots whereas the Z390M Pro4 has two.
With the storage, the Z390 Pro4 has a pair of PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA supported M.2 slots with a total of six SATA ports; the ports are split up into four right-angled and two straight-angled connectors. The Z390M Pro4 has a slightly different setup with one of the dual M.2 slots only offering PCIe 3.0 x4 with the other port allowing for both PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA drives to be used. The ASRock Z390M Pro4 also has six SATA ports with four featuring right-angled connectors and two with straight-angled connectors located between the right-angled ports and 24-pin ATX motherboard power input. Both boards have four RAM slots with a total capacity of up to 64 GB and have official support for DDR4-4300.
The rear panel on the ASRock Z390 Pro4 consists of two USB 3.1 Gen2 (Type-A and Type-C), two USB 3.0 Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports. A trio of video outputs including HDMI, DVI-D and D-sub, as well as a combo PS/2 port and thanks to an M.2 E-key socket, a compatible Wi-Fi adapter can be installed with a bracket currently sitting empty for this on the rear IO. The singe LAN port is controlled by an Intel I219V Gigabit chip and the three 3.5 mm audio jacks are powered by a Realtek ALC892 HD audio codec.
On the mATX sized ASRock Z390M Pro4 rear panel, a single USB 3.1 Gen2 Type and Type-C port are there, along with four additional USB 3.0 Type-A ports. Featured is a single Intel I219V Gigabit powered LAN port with the same Realtek ALC892 HD audio codec offering three 3.5 mm audio jacks, but the Z390M Pro4 drops the bracket and instead opts for two PS/2 ports; one for a mouse and the other for a keyboard. The same trifecta of video outputs is also featured which consist of a DVI-D, HDMI and D-Sub output.
Both the ASRock Z390 Pro4 and Z390M Pro4 have a suggested MSRP of $130 which are currently the cheapest boards ASRock offers so far on the Z390 chipset. The models trade off well with the extra PCB space on the Z390 Pro4 being used to include an extra PCIe 3.0 x1 slot and both M.2 slots on this model allow for both PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA drives to be used. The Z390M Pro4 marks itself as one of only a handful of mATX boards currently the on the Z390 chipset and on the whole, doesn't really lose anything of worth over the ATX model. Neither model supports RGB backlighting and there isn't even a single and basic 5050 RGB header in sight. The Pro4 boards as you would expect are more for professional users and although there are no obvious drawbacks for gaming, the lack of features means most will look elsewhere.
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Valantar - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
That would be pretty shocking, yeah, but the sheer size of that lump of metal still has me a bit worried. Guess that's what you get when you try to squeeze power delivery for a CPU that (likely) pulls >300W when overclocked into an ITX board (and refuse to use riser boards like before, for some reason).FXi - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
The power feed also changed with z390 I believe at least in the Asus models it did. The power feed of the 370 was "enough" to drive the newer 9700/9900 but there is a difference there that may impact enthusiasts. I don't think it enough to warrant an upgrade but something to consider.Also people should remember that while it is still a bit of a ways off, wifi is going to change to Wifi6 or 802.11ax starting now and probably seeing much of the changeover during 2019/2020 depending on adoption choices. And there is also pci-e 4.0 to consider next year probably that should be thought about before people do "marginal" upgrades from 370 era chipsets.
FXi - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Silly thing posted in edit window. Sorry power delivery and other points covered by you. Would have edited if I could have found that optionDanNeely - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Other things to look forward to in the next few generations are: Less-hacky USB3.1 implementations (eg this articles speculation that a 10g port will need to eat 2 HSIO lanes instead of 1, and still needing an extra chip to support USB-C). Spectre/Meltdown fixes in hardware. A reduced DMI bottleneck between the CPU and chipset (either just from upgrading the link to PCIe4/5, moving some of the peripheral IO onto the CPU, or both.Valantar - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
Considering that the maximum theoretical bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 x1 is 984.6MB/s, you _need_ two PCIe lanes (and thus two HSIO lanes) for a USB 3.1G2 (1.25GB/s) controller unless you want to significantly bottleneck it. That's not "hacky", that's reality, even if this leaves a lot of bandwidth "on the table" if this only powers a single port (which it rarely does, though, and given that a full load on two ports at one time is unlikely, running two 1.25GB/s ports off two .99GB/s lanes is a good solution).Moving DMI to PCIe 4.0 will be good, though, particularly for multiple NVMe SSDs and >GbE networking.
DanNeely - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
Splitting the traffic over 2 HSIO lanes is a hack because it'd require something to split/combine the traffic between the chipset and usbport. That in turn has me wondering if the speculation about the implementation being done that way is correct, or if the Z390 has 6 HSIO lanes that can run 10Gbps instead of the 8 that the rest top out at for PCIe3repoman27 - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
The implementation is absolutely not done that way. HSIO lanes are simply differential signaling pairs connected to a PCIe switch or various controllers via a mux. The PCH has a 6-port USB 3.1 Gen 2 xHCI, which can only feed 6 HSIO muxes. The back end of that xHCI is connected to an on-die PCIe switch which in turn is connected to the DMI interface. That DMI 3.0 x4 interface is already massively oversubscribed, but it is at least equivalent to a PCIe 3.0 x4 link, which is the most bandwidth that can be allotted to a single PCH connected device.Srikzquest - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
HDMI 2.0 is available in Asus and Gigabyte's ITX boards as well.gavbon - Tuesday, October 9, 2018 - link
Thank you Srikzquest; updated the tables, obviously missed this yesterday :) - Thanks againHickorySwitch - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Correction:https://www.asus.com/us/Commercial-Servers-Worksta...
It says under "Specifications" that the board sports HDMI 2.0[b?]