The Intel Z490 Overview: 44+ Motherboards Examined
by Gavin Bonshor on April 30, 2020 10:00 AM ESTASUS ROG Strix Z490-I Gaming
ASUS has announced just one mini-ITX model for Z490 so far, the ROG Strix Z490-I Gaming. While not clear when it will be released, it includes an actively cooled power delivery heatsink. This is designed to keep the 8+2 power delivery cool with a single 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power input. This includes a large aluminium rear panel cover, heat pipe connected heatsinks, and comes with two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots.
Looking at a rendering of the ASUS ROG Strix Z490-I, it follows a black and silver theme, with a lot of focus on its cooling capabilities. On the power delivery heatsink integrated into the rear panel cover is a small cooling fan, with a U-shaped heatsink design that stretches around the LGA1200 CPU socket. At the bottom is a single full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, with two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots which are both located on the front of the board underneath a beefy M.2 heatsink. The ROG Strix Z490-I also has four SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. Due to its small size, it has two memory slots with support for up to 64 GB of DDR4-4800 memory.
While we don't currently have rear panel specs, we do know the ASUS ROG Strix Z490-I has support for up to 13 USB ports when combining front panel headers and what's on the rear panel. From what we can make out, it has three USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports. Included is an Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface with BT 5.1 device support, as well as a single Intel I225-V 2.5 G Ethernet controller powering the single Ethernet port. A pair of video outputs with a higher-spec HDMI 2.0a, and DisplayPort 1.4 video output. A SupremeFX S1220A HD audio codec powers the three 3.5 mm audio jacks.
Even though we won't see the ASUS ROG Strix Z490-I Gaming at launch, it will come with an MSRP of $300 which is considerably higher than mini-ITX Intel-based desktop boards have been in the past.
This page will be updated when more information becomes available to us.
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GardenSausage - Monday, September 21, 2020 - link
Looking for any help. I just bought the Z490 Gaming X AX. 9/20/20. I got it up and running but can not figure out how to get any of my video cards to work. Have gotten it to post once but defaulted to the onboard. I have updated my BIOS of F3 I belive. Run threw many settings and still no life to my GPU. I get 5 Brapps then a power down. The MP gets to the GPU illumination boot light and cant get past it. I have tries my GTX 770sc and 980ftw with no luck. Both are EVGA. Please any ideas on how to get my BIOS stable.Win 10 Home
i5- 10400
16gb G.Skill @3200
M.2 1tb
800w PSU (Coolermaster I think)
Atty57 - Monday, June 28, 2021 - link
I liked the fact that the motherboard has more than one nvme (gen 4) slots. The capacitors used are of high quality and cooling material used is also of high grade. The RGB could have been better along the edges though it does the work well . There are multiple fan headers so you won't have any problems regarding that. And the water pump header is also a nice touch. Great ram frequency too.At this price point couldn't have asked for anything more.