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
Supermicro C9Z390-CGW
The SuperO C9Z390-CGW is an ATX sized model which is targeted towards gamers looking to utilize some of the more premium features as the PGW model, but with some obvious cutbacks. The C9Z390-CGW has two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which operate at ether x16/x4 with the bottom PCIe 3.0 x4 slot populated at the bottom and/or x16/x8 and the bottom slot is disabled when the second full-slot is in use. bottom. Sandwiched in between the full-length slots are three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots with a pair of M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slots with heatsinks also among the PCI. Other storage options include six SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays. Memory support is slightly lower than the PGW with the CGW supporting up to DDR4-3866 and up to a maximum capacity of 64 GB across four available slots. Like the flagship PGW model featured above, the CGW also features five 4-pin fan headers with one of the headers being designated to water cooling pumps.
On the rear panel of the C9Z390-CGW are three USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A ports with an additional Gen2 Type-C port and two USB 3.0 Type-A ports making up the rest of the USB connectors. A total of two LAN ports are present with one coming via an Aquantia AQC107 10G NIC with the other being controlled by an Intel I219V Gigabit chip. The five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical out are powered by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec and the board also includes a PS/2 combo port, two DisplayPort 1.2 outputs, a single HDMI 1.4 output and two antenna connectors for the included 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi adapter; this also provides users with Bluetooth 5 connectivity.
The Supermicro C9Z390-CGW takes certain elements of the flagship C9Z390-CGW such as 10G Aquantia networking, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi connectivity with two full-length slots offering x16 bandwidth on both for unrestrictive bandwidth when running two-way CrossFire and SLI setups; it's quite likely the bottom PCIe 3.0 x4 shares bandwidth with the M.2 slots. The C9Z390-CGW slots right underneath the more comprehensive PGW, but as of yet initial pricing is currently unknown.
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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.