The Intel Z490 Overview: 44+ Motherboards Examined
by Gavin Bonshor on April 30, 2020 10:00 AM ESTASUS Prime Z490-A
Moving down the ASUS Z490 product stack and it wouldn't be a launch without the clean white and silver designed Prime series. Moving away from gamers and more to users looking for fresh and simplistic styling, without breaking the bank on extravagant features, the Prime series offers users a very low-cost entry point to the Z490 market. The ASUS Prime Z490-A is slightly different to the other Prime models as it's quite premium, and as such includes two PCIe 3.0 M.2, an Intel 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet controller, with a Realtek S1220A HD audio codec and a 14-phase power delivery.
Coming with silver and grey heatsinks on a black and silver patterned PCB, the ASUS Prime Z490-A has some integrated RGB LEDs integrated into the rear panel cover, and underneath the chipset heatsink. The Z490-A is using a teamed 12+2 power delivery, with an 8-pin and 4-pin 12 V ATX pairing providing power to the CPU. There are three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which operate at x16, x8/x8, and x8/x8/+4, with three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. For storage, there are three PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, with only one coming with a heatsink, and six SATA ports with RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 support. Included onboard is a Thunderbolt 3 header, and has an M.2 Key-E for users looking to add their wireless interface to the board. There are four memory slots which can accommodate up to 128 GB of DDR4-4600 memory.
Focusing on the rear panel, the ASUS Prime Z490-A has a USB Type-C, and seven USB Type-A ports, with an HDMI 1.4b and DisplayPort 1.4 pair of video outputs. Also present is five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output which are powered by a Realtek S1220A HD audio codec, with a single Ethernet port driven by an Intel I225-V 2.5 G controller.
The ASUS Prime Z490-A represents a more modest offering with less aggressive aesthetics and instead opts for a clean silver look. It does half a decent controller set which is led by an Intel I255-V 2.5 G Ethernet controller and has three PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots for high-speed NVMe M.2 SSDs. The Prime Z490-A offers users an alternative to the darker Strix branded boards and has a decent price attached with an MSRP of $230 at launch.
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plonk420 - Sunday, May 3, 2020 - link
noice! thanks for the VRM information! amusingly (to myself), i look at VRM stuff before i look at I/O :Dkwinz - Monday, May 4, 2020 - link
I genuinely don't know why this new chipset exists. It bringa virtually nothing new. DMI 3.0 in a new chipset is a disgrace.Oxford Guy - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
"I genuinely don't know why this new chipset exists."Smoke and mirrors is fun?
Landfills are hungry?
mrvco - Monday, May 4, 2020 - link
Gotta keep those mobo mfgs busy I guess. Hopefully Intel’s Groundhog Day antics don’t distract them too much from the B550 boards I’m waiting patiently on.MadAd - Monday, May 4, 2020 - link
Not again, yet another tired selection of ATX clunkers, with a few mandatory ITX thrown in .When on earth are we/the industry going to move on from this prehistoric outdated form format!AdditionalPylons - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
Very glad to see 2.5GbE finally becoming more common. Hopefully this convinces network switch manufacturers to get out some cheaper 2.5+ GbE switches soon.DarkAndHungryGod - Thursday, May 7, 2020 - link
The Intel Smart Sound support is duplicated in the first table, Intel Chipset Comparison, and there is one difference between both entries.duploxxx - Friday, May 8, 2020 - link
conclusion: an amazing high count of motherboards for a wasted CPU generation….who ever believes that this is a platform to buy think twice. Knowing Intel I would not fall into the Multi generationCPU / chipset support..... i am sure the super turbo will look nice from benchmark perspective….
nonoverclock - Thursday, May 21, 2020 - link
I'm upgrading from an i7 4770 and want to get the latest, so for me, I'm quite interested in this gen.joshw351 - Wednesday, May 13, 2020 - link
I like how these mobo manufacturers think they can charge 1k for a motherboard when you can throw a 150-200$ waterblock from EK on a regular mobo.