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
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- Z390
MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon AC
The MSI MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon AC as it stands is the premier model from the MPG (performance gaming) range and as such, encompasses some of the higher end controllers such as an Intel I219V Gigabit LAN and 2T2R supported Intel 9560 802.11ac wireless networking adapter. The aesthetic has that famed carbon styled look across the board's heatsinks and rear IO cover, which also has built-in RGB LED lighting too. The board has an all-black PCB and the bottom M.2 slot has an integrated heatsink which lines up alongside the chipset heatsink.
With a very similar PCB layout to the MPG Z390 Gaming Edge AC, the MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon AC has a total of three PCIe 3.0 full-length slots which operates (top to bottom) at x16, x8 and x4. This means that 3-way CrossFire and two-way SLI multi-graphics card configurations; also present is three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. Storage wise the top MPG model has a pair of PCIe and SATA compatible M.2 slots, while the bottom slot gets paired up with a heatsink which integrates itself into the chipset heatsink. As with all of MSI's Z390 launch ATX motherboard lineup, MSI has opted to use all of the available six SATA ports provided from the Z390 chipset itself. Memory support is limited to DDR4-4400 and has the capacity for a total of up to 64 GB across all of the four available memory slots.
The rear panel as expected accommodates a larger number of USB real estate than other MPG series models with the Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon AC making the most of the USB 3.1 Gen2 integration with the chipset as three Type-A and a single Type-C are present. Rounding off the rear panel USB is two USB 2.0 ports while an additional four USB 3.0 and four USB 2.0 ports through the use of internal headers. Also present is a pair of video outputs which consist of a single HDMI and DisplayPort. The onboard audio and five 3.5 mm audio jacks take their direction from a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec while the single LAN port is controlled by an Intel I219V Gigabit networking chip.
MSI's suggested pricing of the MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon is $230 which seems very reasonable considering this is basically a cut-down version of the MEG Z390 ACE. Users looking to make use of the super fast 1.73 Gbps wireless network can do so thanks to the inclusion of an Intel 9560 2T2R Wave 2 capable WiFi adapter. Users who don't want to spend extra money on the wireless networking can save themselves $30 as MSI also lists a non-AC version of this board, the MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon for $200.
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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?]