The Intel Z590 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Detailed
by Gavin Bonshor on January 19, 2021 10:15 AM ESTMSI MPG Z590 Gaming Force
A new addition to its MPG series, MSI has unveiled the MPG Z590 Gaming Force. As aggressive in nature, as it sounds, it is using a very unorthodox color scheme with metallic purple and gold heatsinks on a black PCB. Resembling something out of Gundam, MSI is advertising a premium 16-phase power delivery for the CPU, with a pair of 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power inputs, with a two-digit LED debugger located in the top-right corner.
The MSI MPG Z590 Gaming Force uses three full-length PCIe slots, with the top two operating at PCIe 4.0 x16 and x8/x8, and the third one operating at PCIe 3.0 x4, with two additional PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. Looking at storage options, it includes one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, with two PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA M.2 slots, each of them covered by its own fancy purple and yellow accented heatsink. The board also includes six SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. Located along the bottom of the PCB is a 6-pin 12 V GPU power input, which is designed to provide more power to the PCIe slots, although this is a very niche inclusion and is not entirely necessary.
On the rear panel is one USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C, three USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and four USB 2.0 ports. For networking, it includes an Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controller. The onboard audio configuration consists of five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output, which is powered by an unspecified Realtek HD audio codec. A small BIOS Flashback button is located on the left-hand side, while users looking to utilize Intel HD graphics can the DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0 video output pairing.
The MPG Z590 Gaming Force is a new MSI model and looks to be inspired by the legendary Gundam with its purple and gold color scheme. It has a solid mid-range controller set, with a reasonable MSRP price of $314.
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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?