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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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?