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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James5mith - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
Awesome, Multi-GbE this generation! Remind me again which company sells Multi-GbE switches for less than $20/port?Tilmitt - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
We live in joyful hope.dtexo - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compar...AX210 doesn’t seem to be CNVi, but PCIe+USB
dtexo - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
Same with Killer Wi-Fi card(s)https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/produc...
Oxford Guy - Thursday, January 21, 2021 - link
So Intel can marry its "Killer" ethernet port to its skull-bearing SSDs for maximum performance in Edge.Harry Lloyd - Thursday, January 21, 2021 - link
The price of the PRIME Z590-A cannot be right. That has always been the fully-featured variant of an entry-level Z-chipset model. The Z490-A costs just over 200 $ now. Is this because of the VRM setup? Who needs 16 phases on a board like this? You will not buy this for extreme overclocking anyway.All these ASUS prices seem ridiculous.
Targon - Thursday, January 21, 2021 - link
And I thought the X570 chipset boards were a bit crazy when it comes to prices, these are off the rails on the crazy train! I am all for having a POST code display, but OLED screens to see on the motherboard what this or that is also seems like a waste of money. If you can get the machine to POST in the first place, going to the BIOS to get data about what is going on with this or that is enough. A waterblock for those who plan to use liquid cooling will also add to the price, no question, and it isn't a bad idea, but some of these other things that just add to the price without adding functionality is what I have a problem with.PaulHoule - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
Ugh.I've never found motherboard reviews that helpful and the last article I read on this site makes me feel worse about it because now I know the performance of a system I build might depend more on the turbo behavior of the motherboard than on the CPU.
I've often found that getting a motherboard is a crap shoot and frequently you find that a particular motherboard has limitations on what you can do with the PCI lanes, or a component that had 35 db of noise for the reviewer has 50 db of noise for me and so forth. I see that $1800 motherboard and I ask myself, "do they make enough of these that they really know that the analog audio path is clean?" and such.
Last time I built a system I had to replace about half of the components at least once to get something I was happy with.
These days I'm inclined to go to a system builder just to have somebody to RMA it to, but if reviews were useful I might go back to building a system myself.
Ghostline91 - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link
How's the Biostar Z590 board? It looks like they're going back to more high-end specs and this one might be a good one to try out. When will we see reviews?vinicici22 - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link
do you guys know if the z590-a rog strix out yet? or it's just already sold out on every sites?