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
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- Z390
ASUS ROG Strix Z390-H Gaming
Although the ROG Strix Z390-H retains the same PCB layout as the Strix Z390-E model, the visuals are much more aggressive with a red and black theme throughout; the Edge branding on the rear panel cover matches this particular color scheme. The Z390-H has three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which operate at x16, x8 and x4 respectively, with the top two also featuring a coating of metal slot reinforcement protection. Like the Z390-E, the Z390-H has three available PCIe 3.0 x1 slots.
Storage capability is rather standard as far as Strix branded 300 series boards go with two M.2 slots available, with one having just PCIe 3.0 x4 support and the other allowing for SATA based drives to be used too. The six available SATA ports are placed differently on the Strix Z390-H with all six ports being aligned vertically in single and an individual array. RAM support is standard for an ATX sized board with four available slots with support for DDR4-4266 and a total combined capacity across all slots of up to 64 GB.
A slightly less comprehensive set of rear panel connectors marks a shift in the ASUS crammed rear panels, but still is remarkably impressive overall as the Strix Z390-H Gaming has a total of four USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A and two USB 3.0 Type-A ports. In addition to this is a pair of video outputs with an HDMI and DisplayPort both being featured, with a PS/2 combo port, single Intel I219V Gigabit powered LAN port and a set of onboard audio connectors controlled by a ROG SupremeFX S1220A audio codec.
The ASUS ROG Strix Z390-H Gaming has an unknown pricing as of yet and is one of the only red and black themed boards on the whole of the Z390 chipset. The ROG logo on the rear panel is RGB and offers compatibility with the ROG AURA Sync RGB software, with the most notable point is the board's inclusion of four USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A ports; sorry, no USB Type-C whatsoever on the Z390-H Gaming.
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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.