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 Prime Z390M Plus
The ASUS Prime Z390M Plus is the cheapest of three mATX ASUS Z390 motherboards and visually looks similar to the Prime Z390-P in terms of aesthetics with the white patterning on a black PCB. The Prime Z390M Plus features the same set of white and black slim heatsinks on the power delivery and has a full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 with a second full-length PCIe 3.0 x4 slot offering up to two-way CrossFire multi-graphics card support. This board like the Prime Z390-A has two M.2 slots with both supporting PCIe 3.0 x4, but only one offering SATA compatibility. Also included are four SATA ports offering support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays.
On the Prime Z390M Plus, memory compatibility stretches to DDR4-4266 which is impressive for an entry-level offering and ASUS has really upped their game in the memory speed stakes. This is provided over four available RAM slots with a maximum supported capacity of up to 64 GB.
The rear panel has two USB 3.1 Type-A ports and four USB 3.0 Type-A ports and features a pair of video outputs which consists of a DVI-D and HDMI connector. A separate PS/2 keyboard and mouse port are located on the left side, with an Intel I219V Gigabit networking controller powering the single LAN port and older Realtek ALC887 HD audio codec controlling the available 3.5 mm audio jacks.
The ASUS Prime Z390M Plus pricing and availability is currently unknown but this model is likely to be the cheapest of the ASUS mATX sized options with a complete focus on offering value over premium chipset features such as the TUF gaming series offers, and this particular model looks to offer users a more value-focused mATX sized entry point onto the Z390 chipset.
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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.