The Intel Z490 Overview: 44+ Motherboards Examined

Biostar 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.