The Intel Z490 Overview: 44+ Motherboards Examined
by Gavin Bonshor on April 30, 2020 10:00 AM ESTBiostar Racing Z490GTN
Considered a consistent and staple model from its range, the Biostar Racing Z490GTN is its sole mini-ITX sized offering which offers a lower entry cost to the world of small form factor on Z490. It’s simplistic in design with black heatsinks on a black PCB, with a budget-focused feature set. Included in its feature set are a single PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot, with four SATA ports and an Intel Gigabit Ethernet controller.
Biostar Z490GTN is advertising the Z490GTN as having a 9-phase power delivery, but inspecting the board itself shows it has a 6+1 power delivery, with six phases for the CPU, and one for the SoC. The black aluminium heat sink doubles up as a rear panel cover, and has a matching black chipset heatsink. There is a single full-length PCIe 3.0 slot, with a single PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot mounted to the rear of the board. For SATA devices, the Z490GTN has four straight-angled SATA ports. On the right-hand side of the board is two memory slots which support DDR4-4000, with a maximum capacity of up to 64 GB. Users looking to add a wireless interface can do so by using the M.2 Key-E slot at the top left of the board.
On the rear panel are four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports, with a D-Sub and HDMI video output pairing for integrated graphics. A Realtek ALC887 HD audio codec powers three 3.5 mm audio jacks, while the board also has a single Ethernet port powered by an Intel I219-V Gigabit controller. Finishing off the Z490GTN rear panel is a single PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port.
The Biostar Racing Z490GTN is geared for the lower-end of the market, offering a cheaper alternative to models from other vendors including ASUS which is asking $300 for its model, albeit with a higher-end feature set. It's unclear how much the Z490GTN will retail for at launch, but given the budget-focused controller set, it's likely to be under $200. Users planning on running an NVME PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD on the rear-mounted slot should also look for an aftermarket M.2 heatsink, just to be on the safe side.
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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.