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-CG
The Supermicro C9Z390-CG and the more expensive C9Z390-CGW seemingly have the same PCB layout which could indicate that both PCB boards are identical in terms of specification, but with this model having less in the way of controllers etc. Aesthetically the CG drops the use of a rear panel cover with metallic grey power delivery heatsinks and a black/grey chipset heatsink. The other key difference is that the C9Z390-CG completely drops RGB support with no integrated LEDs or headers onboard at all. On the storage side of things, the C9Z390-CG has two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots and also includes a total of six SATA ports.
The C9Z390-CG has a total of four RAM slots with support for DDR4-3866 and up to 64 GB in total. On the PCIe front, the board 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. Separate to the these is a total of three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots.
Compared to the more feature-rich and more expensive C9Z390-CGW (on the previous page), the C9Z390-CG has the same layout minus one of the dual LAN and instead opts for a single Intel I219V Gigabit LAN. The USB ports included on the rear panel consist of three USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C and two USB 3.0 Type-A ports. The onboard audio which consists of five 3.5 mm audio jacks and an optical S/PDIF output is controlled by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec and the C9Z390-CG also has a trio of video outputs with two DisplayPort 1.2 and a single HDMI 1.4 port.
The Supermicro C9Z390-CG pricing as it stands is currently unavailable. The target market is gamers on a budget and offers a more cost-effective and solid feature set without passing the cost of flashy RGB and unnessacary visually pleasing covers with the primary focus being on the performance.
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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.