The Intel Z590 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Detailed
by Gavin Bonshor on January 19, 2021 10:15 AM ESTBiostar Z590 Valkyrie
Typically one of the most affordable brands in motherboards is Biostar, with its Racing inspired designs and mid-range controller sets at a competitive price point. For Intel's Z590 chipset launch, Biostar has prepared a premium model, the Z590 Valkyrie. Deriving from the Old Norse language for 'chooser of the slain,' the Z590 Valkyrie includes visually appealing pink and gold accents across the PCIe slot armor, chipset heatsink, and rear panel cover, which also includes integrated LED lighting.
Surrounded by a black, pink, and gold accented set of M.2 heatsinks and armor are three full-length PCIe slots, with two operating at PCIe 4.0 x16 and x8/x8, with a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot along the bottom. Touching more on the storage capabilities of the Z590 Valkyrie, it includes three PCIe M.2 slots, with the top slot operating at PCIe 4.0 x4, with the other two slots supporting both PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA drives, but using SATA drives in the M.2 slot will make some of the SATA ports unavailable as they share bandwidth. Six SATA ports include support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays.
Biostar also includes support for up to DDR4-5000 memory, with a total capacity of up to 128 GB across four memory slots. To provide power to the CPU, Biostar is using a pair of 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power inputs, with a handy two-digit LED debugger located in the bottom left-hand corner.
On the rear panel is a variety of input and output, with one USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C, five USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports. There's a pair of video outputs, including DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0, with five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output powered by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec. Networking on the Z590 Valkyrie consists of a Realtek RTL8125B 2.5 GbE and an unspecific Wi-Fi interface. Finishing off the rear panel is a PS/2 keyboard and mouse combo port, with a preattached rear I/O shield.
Biostar hasn't provided us any information on pricing at the time of writing.
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lmcd - Tuesday, January 19, 2021 - link
8 cores is plenty for this generation of memory bandwidth. The problem is that Intel's next gen will have "16" processors where 8 are full cores, while AMD will have a full 16 cores with all that bandwidth. This generation, Intel is competitive but late.rahvin - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
Is this an attempt to be funny?pman6 - Tuesday, January 19, 2021 - link
meh. show me the $80 b560 boards.this is overkill for me.
Geef - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
Why is Intel always behind the game with memory speeds? 3200 is just a basic speed nowadays. Its great if your running CAS 14 chips but not many are. Why haven't they set a speed up to 4000 or 5000? They can keep XMP going just fine but wouldn't it be better to have systems automatically go that fast if they can?Deicidium369 - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
JEDEC tops out at 3200 - the fastest OFFICIAL speed it 3200. I have Gskill DDR4 4133 on my Gigabyte Z390 / i9900Kand JEDEC speeds are the same for AMD and Intel
Duncan Macdonald - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
For most games the 5800x is the sweet spot due to only having one CPU chiplet so no communication between chiplets. The 5900 and 5950 with two chiplets lose on many games due to the cost of inter chiplet communications exceeding the benefits from the extra cores.The 5900 and 5950 are best in programs that can make good use of all the cores (eg some video editing programs). For any game player with a 5900 or 5950, it might well be possible to get higher game performance by limiting Windows to only the first chiplet (using the numproc boot parameter).
Makaveli - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
I agree with you however the 5800X is really overpriced right now. So when you only have to pay abit more for the 5900X its looks like a far better deal. I think once Rocket lake is out we should see a price correction on the 5800X so the time to buy those will be in March.yeeeeman - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
This....this is wasted resources IMO. There was no need to make another platform on 14nm when they have the 10th gen which is just fine. I mean, the 10900k/10700k are great CPUs still, even compared to 5000 Ryzen series, so I don't know...they should've focused the efforts on bringing Alder Lake and its successor platforms forward.Hope Pat will make a bit of order here and make the schedules and ambitions of Intel a bit more daring, cause Bob just...milked it like there is no tomorrow. Refreshes after refreshes and refreshes.
Makaveli - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
That's what happens when you have a finance guy running the company he is just going to keep the wheels turning and not be aggressive. The new guy is an engineer and I believe he will push the pace which is what Intel needs now.Oxford Guy - Thursday, January 21, 2021 - link
Well, the world really needed a stack of 15 boards from just one motherboard company, too.