Intel Z390 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Analyzed

ASUS ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming

It seems that ASUS has retired or laid the Maximus Impact branded mini-ITX boards to stud as we haven't seen one in the wild since the Z170 chipset; the ASUS Z170 Maximus VIII Impact. While the ever-popular Impact doesn't look to feature in current or future plans for that matter, users looking for a mini-ITX option from ASUS will need to look towards the ROG Strix Z390-Gaming, which in reality doesn't seem all too dissimilar aside from the regular implemented power delivery; not the vertically mounted one feature on the Impact series.

Visual aspects to note include solid grey colored heatsinks with Edge holographic branding towards the bottom of the rear panel cover and RGB lovers will be glad to know there's a customizable LED strip located on the right-hand side; underneath the 24-pin ATX motherboard power input. As expected on a mini-ITX motherboard, there's a single full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slot and the PCB space has been utilized well with a single M.2 slot with inclusive and combined chipset heatsink, as well as an additional M.2 slot on the rear. The Strix Z390-I Gaming also contains four SATA ports which feature straight angled connectors; arranged into two pairs on either side of the RAM slots.

Speaking of RAM, this board supports up to DDR4-4600 which is the fastest of any Z390 board which is one of the reasons extreme overclockers select two-slot ASUS boards as one of their main options in competitive benchmarking. Another highly notable difference in the memory compatibility is that the two RAM slots support up to 64 GB in capacity. This is in line with our expose from Zadak which is manufacturing a double height and double capacity DDR4 32 GB RAM modules with the specifications of the ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming stating that this new type of memory module is officially supported.

The mini-ITX sized ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming is one of only a small handful of Z390 motherboards to have an HDMI 2.0 video output and in addition to this, is a single DisplayPort. An Intel I219V Gigabit LAN port is present with antenna connectors for the included 2T2R Wave 2 802.11ac Intel 9560 Wi-Fi adapter. The USB looks a little lacklustre compared to the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac with two USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, two USB 3.0 Type-A, two USB 2.0 and a single USB 3.0 Type-C port; no USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C capabilities at all. The finishing touches to the Strix Z390-I Gaming is a Realtek based SupremeFX S1220A HD audio codec which powers the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output.

The ASUS ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming pricing is yet to be announced but it won't be on the cheap side, while this model looks to keep most of the high spec features from the ATX sized ROG Strix Z390-E Gaming board, but with a much smaller overall footprint. The inclusion of dual M.2 is nice, but it isn't a unique feature with other mini-ITX Z390 offerings including this.