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
Professional users looking to purchase an ASUS Z390 board without much of the cost-upping controllers and aesthetics will probably be looking towards the Prime series. The Prime series offers an entry-level jump onto the chipset with bare minimum features, but like the rest of the Z390 chipset, they still support overclocking through the Z390 chipset and look to offer better value overall than the far-reaching gaming targeted boards.
ASUS Prime Z390-A
Starting with the premier entry-level Prime range, the ASUS Prime Z390-A is an ATX sized motherboard and features a white, silver and black design throughout. The board has a white rear panel cover and chipset heatsink, with integrated RGB on both with support for ASUS AURA Sync. The PCB has a white patterning which contrasts quite nicely and represents one of the more subtle looking ASUS Z390 options. The Prime Z390-A has three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots with two getting treated to ASUS Safe slot armor protection and the slots operate at x16, x8 and x4 from top to bottom. This means the Prime Z390-A officially supports two-way SLI and up to three-way CrossFire multi-graphics card configurations.
Memory capability comes from four RAM slots with support for DDR4-4266 and a maximum capacity of up to 64 GB. The storage solutions offered on the Prime Z390-A include two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, with only one of them offering support for SATA drives; this seems to be a regular occurrence on the ASUS Z390 line-up. Also included are six SATA ports with the ability to operate RAID 0, 1, 5 or 10 arrays.
This top Prime Z390 model has a total of seven USB ports consisting of three USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 Type-C, two USB 3.0 Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports. A combined total of six audio ports split into five 3.5 mm audio jacks and single S/PDIF optical output controlled by a Realtek S1220A HD 8-channel audio codec, with a single LAN port being powered by an Intel I219V Gigabit networking controller. Finishing off the rear panel is a DisplayPort and HDMI 1.4b pairing of video outputs, as well as a handy PS/2 keyboard and mouse combo port.
The ASUS Prime Z390-A has an unknown MSRP as of yet and looks to offer users not looking to spending the additional budget on gaming related feature sets and flashy aesthetics; RGB is included on this model and white panels with RGB sets this system up really well from a design perspective. The native integration of USB 3.1 Gen2 into the Z390 chipset has been used well on this board and it looks to be a popular board for users not looking to use a WI-Fi enabled model.
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eastcoast_pete - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Yes, you are correct, at least for H310c chipsets, maybe more (all?). I looked at the digitimes report on Intel outsourcing to TSMC, and that, if correct, would be about chipsets fabbed in 14nm. I wonder if Anadtech could check the 390s from the newest MoBos and sleuth out if they are also a case of "back to the future - 22 is the new 14 at Intel".peterfares - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
Still waiting for someone to make a mini-ITX board with 4x SODIMM slots. The X299 one is interesting combined with a 9800X but I'd rather have the newer architecture with better IPC and clocks.gavbon - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
4 x SODIMMs has no performance benefit on Z370/Z390 other than a capacity increase because of the dual channel memory controller. The ASUS Z390 Maximus Gene and Strix Z390-I support the new 32GB double capacity SODIMMs to give more options for mini-ITX users needing more capacity.The X299 ASRock board put 4 x RAM slots on it so it could benefit from the quad channel memory controller
gamingkingx - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
Gavon understands it..On ITX its all about how you use the space.. It would be sille to have 4 slots for dual channel.
BUT! It would interesting to use only 2x SO-DIMM..
cyrilp - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Some of the asrock boards have 8 SATA3, 3 Ultra M.2 but it's a bit misleading as they share lanes. so you can't use 8 sata3 drivers and 3 m2 ones at the same timegavbon - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Yeah, it's a bit of a pain, but one of the drawbacks of a chipset designed for the desktop. Unfortunately, in that situation, it's one or the other. If I was going to use 8 x SATA drives and 3 x M.2, I would probably be using a HEDT chipset such as X299 or TR4 anywayballsystemlord - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Spelling and grammar corrections. I did not read this whole article. You 2 goofed this one up pretty badly."In the below table a question mark (?) denotes that we currently don't currently have this information available."
Too many currentlys.
"In the below table a question mark (?) denotes that we don't currently have this information available."
"My take on it is that it could be easier to mount a CPU pot for extreme overclockers for some reason, as I'm sure this board is all about the performance marbles and nothing else."
Sound bytes as a sentence (SBAAS). I've very little idea what you were trying to say. Maybe:
"My take on it is that it could be easier to mount a CPU pot for extreme overclockers. For some reason they insist on pots. Or maybe not, as I'm sure this board is all about the performance and nothing else."
"The new gaming themed naming structure consists of three different ranges which make a lot of sense when they deciphered; the MEG is the enthusiast gaming, MPG is performance gaming and the MAG is the arsenal gaming."
Missing "are".
"The new gaming themed naming structure consists of three different ranges which make a lot of sense when they're deciphered; the MEG is the enthusiast gaming, MPG is performance gaming and the MAG is the arsenal gaming."
"The MAG essentially renames the original arsenal range of boards with a name which seems fitting etc rifle mag, a happy coincidence perhaps."
Stray "etc".
"The MAG essentially renames the original arsenal range of boards with a name which seems fitting i.e. rifle mag, a happy coincidence perhaps."
gavbon - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
Appreciated, updated :)ballsystemlord - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
I love your table on "Power Delivery Comparison".But how do you tell how many phases each board has from your table?
E.g. "GIGABYTE Z390 Gaming SLI" has 5+2 ISL69138 but then has 5 ISL6617A doublers leading me to the conclusion that it is a 25 + 2 phase design.
Thanks!
gavbon - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
I've updated the table to make it more clear :) - The PPaks are dual channel MOSFETs so each of the GIGABYTE boards is running 10 phases, with 5 doublers = 2 phases per channel. This is the data we received directly from GIGABYTE.