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
The ASUS ROG Strix range of motherboards slot right in between the Maximus XI and TUF Gaming ranges but with a mixture of features and traits from both ranges to keep pricing competitive with other vendors mid-range offerings. These affordable models do have a good range of overclocking, but without the extreme components and more importantly, without the larger price tags associated with the higher echelon of Maximus XI models.
ASUS ROG Strix Z390-E Gaming
The ASUS ROG Strix Z390-E is another Z370 model to get an overhaul of sorts ready for the new 9th generation Intel processors. The newer Strix Z390-E looks relatively similar in terms of PCB space. The main differences come visually with the new Z390-E having primarily black themed heatsinks with a customizable RGB ROG logo with ROG Edge holographic branding towards the bottom of the rear panel cover. The chipset heatsink features the Strix branding and has a metallic grey and black monotone design.
Across the center of the board are three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which run at x16, x8 and x4 which means two-way SLI and up to three-way CrossFire multi-graphics card configurations are supported. The Z390-E also has three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots which give users one less than the previous Z370-E. Storage wise the Z390-E has two M.2 slots with one dedicated to just PCIe 3.0 x4 drives and the second allowing for both PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA drives to be used; both M.2 slots have inclusive heatsinks. The board also has a total of six SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays. There are four RAM slots with official support for up to DDR4-4266 with a total capacity of up to 64 GB.
On the rear panel of the mid-ranged Strix Z390-E Gaming is a varied selection of input and outputs. USB support consists of three USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C, two USB 3.0 Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports. A pair of video outputs consisting of a DisplayPort and HDMI are featured, along with a PS/2 combo port, an Intel I219V Gigabit controlled LAN port and connectors for the 2T2R 802.11ac Intel 9560 Wi-Fi adapter. Finishing off the rear panel is five 3.5 mm audio jacks and a single S/PDIF optical output powered by the ROG SupremeFX S1220A HD audio codec.
The ASUS ROG Strix Z390-E Gaming pricing is unknown at present and represents the most feature-rich of the Strix branded gaming motherboards. The main difference between the Z390-E Gaming and the other ATX sized Z390 Strix based models are the inclusion of the 1.73 Gbps capable Wi-Fi adapter with Bluetooth 5 connectivity support; this is one of the main reasons for the increase in price too.
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di4b0liko - Tuesday, November 20, 2018 - link
Asus ROG STRIX Z390-F or asrock taichi ?pradeep.ramalingam - Friday, November 23, 2018 - link
Hi,I was wondering whether "MSI MPG Z390M Gaming Edge AC" with processor "Intel i5-9600K" will it work with onboard graphics (Intel® UHD Graphics 630) without a GPU from nvidia/amd?
Tigrou - Tuesday, January 15, 2019 - link
"Z390 Motherboard Audio" panel in conclusion is incorrect. For example the MSI Z-390 A PRO has ALC892 but it is not in the list.Faslane - Wednesday, February 27, 2019 - link
Can you do a more in-depth overclocking guide for this board or is there one? if so may I please have a link to just a basic overclocking guide for this board? I have the board and loved it and I know I can go into the phantom gaming 4 app of course but I would rather do it at the BIOS level and save various profiles for testing but I'm a little new to some of the overclocking stuff but I do have a water cooled system with an 8th gen i5 9706 core so I know I can push it quite a bit :-)lb1966 - Thursday, April 11, 2019 - link
Just bought an IBuyPower with this MB init.Anybody able to hook it up to a home theater receiver?
7.1 sounds great on the headphones but I gotta take them off every once in while. Can I use the rear audio panel?
electricjedi - Thursday, January 9, 2020 - link
re: Asrock z390 gaming 4I know this does have a thunderbolt 5 pin header on the board, is this for thunderbolt 3?
Will the Asrock Thunderbolt 3 AIC R2.0 pci-e card work with this board?
or would I be smarter to get the GIGABYTE GC-ALPINE RIDGE (Rev 2.0) Thunderbolt3 Certified PCI-E Expansion card (since I know the z390 is "alpine ridge").
catminister - Saturday, November 28, 2020 - link
Also keep in mind that this board has no support for PCIe 4.0 or WIFI 6 802.11 AX in fact, it seems that Gigabyte abandons this board once purchased. If you want PCIe 4.0 to get the most out of the new Gen 4 NVMe M.2 drives or 802.11 AX support you are going to have to spend up and buy the X570 and a new CPU because socket 1151 is finished. A huge disappointment after recently upgrading to an Gigabyte Aorus Pro Wifi only this year...Turon - Saturday, December 25, 2021 - link
i can’t find the second ssd slot for the life of me, plz help.