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
ASUS TUF Z390M Pro Gaming & Z390M Pro Gaming Wi-Fi
The TUF Z390M Pro Gaming is the smaller mATX sibling of the above ASUS Z390 Pro Gaming and as a result, features much of the same black and grey design with yellow accents. The main differences between the ATX and mATX sized TUF Pro Gaming motherboards are the smaller model has two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which run at x16 or x8/x4 and ASUS has only included one PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. The maximum memory the Z390M Pro Gaming supports is DDR4-4266 and the board does offer four RAM slots with a maximum support capacity of up to 64 GB.
Storage capability on the TUF Z390M Pro Gaming M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA supported slots with one of the slots being supplemented with an M.2 heatsink. This mATX sized board keeps all six SATA ports which are split into two different sections; three straight-angled ports at the bottom right-hand edge of the board, with three right-angled ports on the right-hand side underneath the 24-pin ATX motherboard power input.
ASUS TUF Z390M Pro Gaming (WI-Fi) Rear Panel
With the only differences between the TUF Z390M Pro Gaming and Z390 Pro Gaming (Wi-Fi) being the latter has an Intel 9560 2T2R Wave 2 supported 802.11ac adapter; take this out of the equation and the rest of the rear panel and specifications are exactly the same. A total of six USB ports comprised of one USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, one USB 3.0 Type-C and four USB 3.0 Type-A ports is featured, as well as HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs. A pair of PS/2 ports with one for a keyboard and the other for a mouse sitting at the left-hand side of the rear panel, an Intel I219V Gigabit controlled LAN port and basic three 3.5 mm port powered Realtek S1200A HD audio codec completes the capacity of the panel.
The ASUS TUF Z390M Pro Gaming pricing us yet to be revealed but it's expected that the TUF Z390M Pro Gaming Wi-Fi will command a higher premium with an Intel 9560 MU-MIMO Wave2 Wi-Fi adapter included. The pairing of mATX form factor boards aims at the lower end of the mid-range segment and without too much going on, users looking for a more comprehensive mATX board may look to the more expensive ROG Maximus XI Gene or another competitors offering.
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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.