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
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- NZXT
- Supermicro
- Z390
ASUS ROG Strix Z390-F Gaming
The ASUS ROG Strix Z390-F Gaming has a very similar feature set to the Strix Z390-E gaming with the main differences coming in integrated networking capabilities and in that the Strix Z390-F Gaming only has a single M.2 heatsink included. Visually it’s expected the Strix Z390-F as similar visuals to the Z390-E Gaming model, with only minor visual adjustments between the two gaming-focused models with a single M.2 heatsink (as opposed to two) and the lack of an integrated Wi-Fi adapter.
Specifications wise the ROG based Z390-F Gaming model has support for two-way SLI and three-way CrossFire multi-graphics card support thanks to three-full length PCIe 3.0 slots which operate at x16, x8 and x4; accompanying these are three further PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. The storage capabilities are identical to the Z390-E Gaming with two PCIe 3.0 x4 capable M.2 slots, with only one offering SATA support; the main difference is the Strix Z390-F Gaming has a single M.2 heatsink. The Strix Z390-F Gaming has six SATA ports in total which support RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays. There are four available RAM slots which support DDR4-4266 and with up to a maximum of 64 GB in total.
What we do know about the rear panel is that it has a single LAN port powered by an Intel I219V Gigabit controller and five 3.5 mm jacks, with a single S/PDIF optical output which takes direction from a SupremeFX S1220A HD audio codec. Also included are three USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A ports, one USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port, a DisplayPort and HDMI video output too.
The current availability and pricing of the ASUS ROG Strix Z390-F are currently unknown, but as more details and information becomes available, we will ensure to keep this section updated.
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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?]