ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming 4, ac, ax & 2.5G

The ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming 4 is part of a series of four models which caters towards the entry-level market segment, with each board based upon the same design with silver heatsinks and a silver and black printed PCB. Each model from the Phantom Gaming 4 series on Z490 offers different networking capability. Everything else remains the same across all four PG4 models with two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, six SATA ports, two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots and a Realtek ALC892 HD audio codec.


ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming 4/AC Motherboard

The different options available include one base model with Gigabit Ethernet, with another with Gigabit Ethernet plus Wi-Fi 5 support, another with Gigabit and a Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface, and a model with 2.5 G Ethernet. Everything else hardware-wise remains the same with two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which operate at x16/+4, with three PCIe 3.0 slots. There are two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, with six SATA ports; four right-angled and two straight angled. For memory, there are four slots with support for up to DDR4-4400 with a maximum capacity of up to 128 GB. ASRock is advertising the Z490 Phantom Gaming 4 and all its variants to include a 10-phase power delivery, which has an 8-pin and 4-pin pair of 12 V ATX CPU power inputs.


ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming 4/AX Rear Panel

Starting off with networking, the base ASRock Phantom Gaming 4 model includes an Intel I219-V Gigabit Ethernet port, while the Z490 Phantom Gaming 4/ac (Wi-Fi 5) and ax (Wi-Fi 6) variants include a wireless interface. The ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming 4/2.5G includes a Realtek RTL8125BG 2.5 G Ethernet controller but doesn't include wireless connectivity. Across all four Z490 Phantom Gaming 4 models are one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, one USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports. There is a single HDMI video output, a PS/2 combo port, and three 3.5 mm audio jacks powered by a Realtek ALC892 HD audio codec.

The ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming series offers good value for money on paper, especially for users building an affordable gaming system featuring a single NVIDIA graphics card, or two supported AMD Radeon cards in single or two-way Crossfire. It has a budget controller set, but ASRock offers variety, all at a similar price point.

The base ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming 4 model has an MSRP of $150, while the Z490 Phantom Gaming 4/ac, while the ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming 4/2.5G has a price tag of $160, just $10 more for 2.5 G Ethernet. We currently don't have pricing for the Z490 Phantom Gaming 4/ac and ax models at this time.

ASRock Z490 Phantom Gaming ITX/TB3 ASRock Z490 Steel Legend & Z490 Extreme4
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  • stevenfindley - Monday, June 8, 2020 - link

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  • Shinkiro - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link

    A lot of people don't upgrade every consecutive generation. My 3570k and 980ti have been serving me well for half a decade, but now that it's time to get new gear I'm happy to see higher maximum speeds and lower temperatures than the previous generation. The fact that gen10 requires a different socket than Gen 9 is completely irrelevant to me, aside from choosing a compatible board.
  • Orange_Swan - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link

    Exactly, my i5-4690k has served me well for just under 6 years (brought Nov. 14), I tend to buy a new CPU and Mobo every 5ish years.
  • althaz - Saturday, May 2, 2020 - link

    The point is though, that you need to buy a new motherboard, which means you'll probably consider AMD's Ryzen 3000 line-up (generally, AMD will give you better productivity performance, upgradability and lower power, but worse gaming performance, which is why I went Intel last year). If Intel weren't such dicks in forcing people to buy new motherboards, maybe you would be able to just drop in a new CPU (actually in your case it really is irrelevant, a new motherboard was *actually* needed for 6th gen, everything since then would work on the same boards if Intel weren't dicks, but the point stands in general).
  • Tabalan - Sunday, May 3, 2020 - link

    Intel i5 3570k was released 8 years ago, while i5 4690k is 6 years old. Wanting to upgrade build after 6 years with 3 years of mobo backward compatibility (like with AMD, Ryzen 1000 to 4000) means that you either buy 3 years old CPU or buy new mobo + new CPU. In latter case, it doesn't matter if you go with Intel or AMD, because it's down to same thing.
  • bronan - Saturday, May 16, 2020 - link

    Indeed my point exactly every year new stuff gets launched and loads of people jump onto the newest toys just because the cpu is maybe 0.1 Ghz faster if your lucky.
    Because that boost does not work constant at all, i saw that with several friends who bought the 8700k which claims to boost to 4.7 Ghz. Reality is that only 3 out of 28 of these cpu did boost up to 4.7 the rest only gets between 4.4 and 4.6 at the highest and to be honest only in certain tasks.
    So if you follow the baseline of the cpu usage you see during some tasks a few spikes but most of the time it hangs around the baseclock speed.
    I actually still was using my 6700k till 2 months ago on a z170 motherboard then i saw somebody selling his 8700k for a nice price and i switch over.
    The performance increase is close to 0 in almost every task besides when i am packing and unpacking rar and zip files. In the games i do i see hardly any performance gains as well.
    The only thing i am planning to update now is my graphics card, so i am kinda waiting for a very cheap AMD VII or if AMD releases the new big navy.
    But the people who own the AMD VII tend to want to keep them because there had not been one for sale in many months for a reasonable price. The only one i saw was sold at a price above the release price when they came to market.....
    So those who bought the cards seem to be content enough to not sell them at all.
    So i am still stuck at my gtx 1070 and have no plans to pay a premium price for a next gen GPU.
    @Orange_Swan i tend to buy only when i see a huge improvement for the tasks i do, if its below 3% increase i will not buy anything at all. So i sometimes keep running the same stuff sometimes even up to 12 years.
    I got a huge amount of people who i help with their pc hardware and problems and almost everyone of them relies on my expertise to give them proper advise when they want some kinda upgrade.
    Often i can asure them that even though the bragging bonus can be fun, they often will see no improvement at all if they buy a new system. So they wait till i tell them their system can be upgraded or replaced. In almost any case its the gpu which gets replaced by a second hand one in very rare situations i have to ask them to order a new one.
    What i am saying is that even though they keep releasing new stuff, most people do not have a need to upgrade/update anything.
    Actually for now there is absolute no need to have something faster at all for any game at all in the near future, because all will run fine with your current stuff.
    I actually have several who have at least a titan from recent generation and still can not run their games at highest settings in 4K.
  • RealBeast - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link

    All of my builds since my Athlon have been Intel, but no way they'll suck me in on this Z490 1200 pin build, when their next decent CPUs will require something like a Z491 with 1201 pins. ;)
  • Andrew LB - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link

    Intel has already said the next gen will still use LGA 1200 socket.
  • WaltC - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link

    Can't see much "exciting" about this...;)
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link

    It seems like a poster child for a Powerpoint on the inefficiencies of capitalism.

    Literally making another iteration of products "just because".

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