Tiny at $200: ASUS Z390-I Gaming vs. ASRock Z390 Gaming-ITX/ac Review
by Gavin Bonshor on February 12, 2019 10:00 AM ESTTest Bed
As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
While we have been able to measure audio performance from previous Z370 motherboards, the task has been made even harder with the roll-out of the Z390 chipset and none of the boards tested so far has played ball. It seems all USB support for Windows 7 is now extinct so until we can find a reliable way of measuring audio performance on Windows 10 or until a workaround can be found, audio testing will have to be done at a later date.
Test Setup | |||
Processor | Intel i7-8700K, 65W, $300, 6 Cores, 12 Threads, 3.7 GHz (4.7 GHz Turbo) |
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Motherboard | ASUS ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming (BIOS Ver 1003) ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac (BIOS P1.50) |
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Cooling | be quiet! Silent Loop 240mm AIO | ||
Power Supply | Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200W Gold PSU | ||
Memory | 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400 Ran at DDR4-2666 CL16-18-18-35 2T |
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Video Card | ASUS GTX 980 STRIX (1178/1279 Boost) | ||
Hard Drive | Crucial MX300 1TB | ||
Case | Open Test Bed | ||
Operating System | Windows 10 RS3 inc. Spectre/Meltdown Patches |
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.
New Test Suite: Spectre and Meltdown Hardened
For the start of our Z390 reviews, we are using an updated OS, updated drivers, and updated software. This is in line with our CPU testing updates, which includes Spectre and Meltdown patches. As we are in the process of testing more Z390 boards, that data will be added in future reviews however at this point we only have Z370 on the old testing as a reference.
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JlHADJOE - Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - link
Separate companies, but essentially the same owners. Look at the directors of Pegatron and it's full of people who hold similar positions at ASUS.Pegatron's president and CEO, https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/p...">Syh-Jang Liao for example also sits on the board of ASUSPower Corporate and ASUSPower Investment.
Pegatron's Chairman and Group CEO, https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/p...">T.H. Tung likewise chairs ASUS Investment and ASUSTek investment.
You can do this with all of the officers and board members in https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/...">Pegatron and you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who isn't also at ASUS. Basically Pegatron and ASRock were "spun off" so that their friends could put money in it, but the original ASUS people are all still there running the show.
JlHADJOE - Wednesday, February 20, 2019 - link
Comments section didn't like BBcode so clean links here:Syh-Jang Liao: https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/p...
T.H. Tung: https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/p...
Pegatron: https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/...
stuhad - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link
Full bandwidth on the Thunderbolt connection?u.of.ipod - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link
looks like the 'final words' section is missingsecretanchitman - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link
I have the Asrock board and it's been damn solid - fully recommend it!romrunning - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link
The main feature chart for the ASRock shows the Thunderbolt 3 USB-C port next to "USB 3.1 (10 Gbps)"; however, that seems to be doing it a disservice as TB3 can go up to 40GBps, not just 10.Does this mean that the TB3 port is limited to 10Gbps somehow? Or is it only meant to say that the TB3 port can fall back to USB 3.1G2 mode?
Or is it just stuffing data into a cell when another row should/could have been added?
eva02langley - Tuesday, February 12, 2019 - link
Really expensive for a mini-itx board. I got mine for 130$, but it is a B450, but the features are similar.crotach - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - link
I got a Yugo for a much lower price than a Ferrari, but the features are similar.Nutty667 - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - link
I'm amazed there's upto 5fps difference at 4K in ROTTR with the same gpu/cpu combo. Surely that should be purely GPU workload there. Can anyone explain the difference ?zodiacfml - Wednesday, February 13, 2019 - link
Impressive but Intel is lagging for at least several months. i'd be looking at AMD systems until Intel gets their thing in 1st half of 2020.