The Intel Z590 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Detailed
by Gavin Bonshor on January 19, 2021 10:15 AM ESTBiostar Z590I Valkyrie
Another from its new Biostar's Valkyrie series is a premium mini-ITX model. The Biostar Z590I Valkyrie follows a similar design to its larger ATX-sized counterpart with gold and pink accents on black heatsinks. The Z590I Valkyrie includes support for DDR4-5000 memory, 2.5 GbE networking, as well as dual M.2 slots, and four SATA ports.
Located along the bottom of the Z590 Valkyrie is a single full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, with two M.2 slots, one operating at PCIe 4.0 x4 and a second PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA slot. The Valkyrie has four SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. When using a SATA based drive in the second M.2 slot, it does share bandwidth with the SATA slots. Biostar also includes a Key-E M.2 slot, which is populated with an Intel CNVi wireless interface, although there is no telling which CNVi it is based on the specifications we have. The board includes two memory slots that can hold up to 64 GB, with supported speeds up to DDR4-5000.
On the rear panel, the Biostar Z590I Valkyrie includes one USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C, two USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, three USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports. To the far-left hand side are a DisplayPort and HDMI 2.0 video output pairing, with a PS/2 combo keyboard and mouse port. For networking, there's a single Ethernet port driven by a Realtek RTL8125B 2.5 Gb controller, with two unspecified Wi-Fi antenna ports at the right. Finishing off the rear panel is three 3.5 mm audio jacks powered by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec, while it also includes a pre-attached I/O shield.
At the time of writing, Biostar hasn't given us any indication on pricing.
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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.