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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DanTMWTMP - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Are they ALL made in China? What happened to the ones made in Taiwan from a few gens ago? :/gavbon - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
Unfortunately, I cannot confirm this. The ASRock Z390 Taichi I have in my hands says 'designed in Taipei', but that's about it.Nagorak - Sunday, October 14, 2018 - link
Gigabyte apparently has a factory in Taiwan. It seems all the rest moved production to China.WickedMONK3Y - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
The MEG Z390 Godlike looked like such an interesting board until I checked the MSI Specifications page and realised it actually does not have the PLX chip as suspected. The PCI Express slots on the board are configured as 16x / 4x / 8x / 4x instead of 16x / 16x / 8x / 4x or 16x / 8x / 16x / 4x. It seems after PLX sold to whomever owns them now, that the price hike stopped their usage on consumer boards completely.I really really hope somebody comes out with a board that has a PLX chip on board.
gavbon - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
The Supermicro C9Z390-PGW has a Broadcom 8747 PLX PCIe switch :)ZioTom - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
It would be a nice touch including in next MB review what pheriferals stop funcioning when too much PCI-E lanes are used. Some motherboards disable SATA ports when M.2 slot are used; others may require limiting bandwith to one PCI-E slot... etc. Before byuing a motherboard I would like to be warned that is not possibile to use all the features they are advertising.happyfirst - Friday, October 12, 2018 - link
I wish we would get better thunderbolt support. Only one board has it built in? I'm thinking of a Taichi board and see a Thunberbolt AIC connector in the manual, but then I can't really find enough good quality posts of people having success putting it to use. I'd like to get a new external nvme ssd thunderbolt drive to run my vms off of so I can more easily take them on the road with me and use from my notebook.ddcc - Saturday, October 13, 2018 - link
Certain Gigabyte boards, e.g. Z390 Aorus Pro WiFi, seem to be using Intel's Z390 CNVi, but aren't listed in the article.gavbon - Monday, October 15, 2018 - link
I'm going to be updating tomorrow with more information; been working on getting one of the board reviews ready for the end of the week :)gavbon - Sunday, October 21, 2018 - link
Will be adding these in tomorrow (not at a PC currently) - We didn't have the information available prior to writing