The Intel Z590 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Detailed
by Gavin Bonshor on January 19, 2021 10:15 AM ESTASRock Z590 Steel Legend & SL Wi-Fi 6E
One of ASRock's more recent ranges comes via the Steel Legend series, represented by the ASRock Z590 Steel Legend Wi-Fi 6E. It marks a much different design from its other Z590 models with an urban camouflaged PCB and silver and white accented heatsinks. It includes an illuminated Steel Legend logo in the rear panel cover and chipset heatsink, with more RGB LEDs, integrated on the right-hand side. ASRock also has a non-Wi-Fi 6E variant, the same board, but without the CNVi.
The ASRock Z590 Steel Legend WiFi 6E includes two full-length PCIe slots, including a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot up top, while the second slot is locked down at PCIe 3.0 x4, with three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. There are four memory slots with support for DDR4-4800 memory and the capability for users to install up to 128 GB. Storage options include three M.2 slots, one operating at PCIe 4.0 x4, and the other two restricted to PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA. ASRock includes six SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays for more conventional storage. ASRock also advertises a large 14-phase power delivery with DR. MOS power stages.
ASRock includes one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C on the rear panel, one USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports. There's a pair of video outputs, including one HDMI and one DisplayPort, with the board's five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output driven by an older Realtek ALC897 HD audio codec. The networking array includes one Realtek RTL8125 2.5 GbE controller, with an undisclosed Wi-Fi 6E CNVi providing both wireless and BT 5.2 connectivity. The ASRock Z590 Steel Legend omits the Wi-Fi 6E, but everything else is the same.
At the time of writing, ASRock hasn't shared details on its Z590 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.