The Intel Z690 Motherboard Overview (DDR5): Over 50+ New Models
by Gavin Bonshor on November 9, 2021 9:00 AM ESTASRock Z690 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 (DDR5)
For the launch of Intel's Alder Lake, ASRock has prepared two mini-ITX form factor motherboards for launch, one for the premium market and one for entry-level users. The most premium of the pairing is the ASRock Z690 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 which continues the brand's lineage of providing premium power and features but on the smaller mini-ITX sized platform. The pocket rocket Z690 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 opts for a classy glossy black rear panel cover and heatsink selection, with elements of red around the board and within the ASRock and PG gaming logo too. ASRock is also advertising an 11-phase power delivery with smart power stages, with a single 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power input delivering power to the processor.
As this is a mini-ITX sized motherboard, it includes just one full-length PCIe slot which is operating at PCIe 5.0 x16. As a consequence of its size, it's only able to fit two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots on it and opts for just three SATA ports, which are still capable of supporting Intel RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. On the right-hand side of the board is a pair of memory slots that are capable of supporting DDR5-6400 out of the box, with a combined capacity of up to 64 GB.
One of the board's most prominent features is that it has one Thunderbolt 4 Type-C port, with additional support from four USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and one USB 3.2 G1 Type-A port. Integrated audio consists of five 3.5 mm audio jacks with one S/PDIF optical output powered by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec, with a Killer E3100G 2.5 GbE controller and Killer AX1675 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi providing the boards networking support. Finishing off the rear panel is one HDMI 2.1 and one DisplayPort 1.4 video output, with a clear CMOS button and BIOS Flashback button.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
126 Comments
View All Comments
mode_13h - Friday, November 12, 2021 - link
I was really disappointed not to see more discussion of costs and why the price distribution of these boards tends to skew so high.However, I was most surprised to see how much lower some of the entry-level models are priced. Do we think these will be produced in sufficient volume, or are they primarily there as a means of upselling would-be buyers who, out of frustration at seeing them always out-of-stock eventually end up buying one of the more expensive models?
mikk - Saturday, November 13, 2021 - link
MSI Pro Z690-A WIFI, MSI Pro Z690-A and many more have the cheaper Realtek ALC897 Codec, the audio table is not accurate and it says Z490 instead of Z690.ajollylife - Sunday, November 14, 2021 - link
Wtf is with the PCIe 3.0 slots? I'm looking at the Gigabyte Aorus Master, has 10gig onboard, great, but then the other two pcie slots are pcie 3.0 So confused.mode_13h - Sunday, November 14, 2021 - link
From what I've read, PCIe 4.0 tends to require retimers, which adds cost and takes space. Those could be reasons why we don't see more PCIe 4.0 slots.back2future - Monday, November 15, 2021 - link
maybe mainboards start getting reshaped/redesigned (vertical m.2, backside slots/connectors, ?) instead of using retimers (chipset TDP includes retimer power?, cooling power for peripherals on PCIe 5.x speeds on 4GB/(s*lane)=~2 lanes sufficient for fastest available (2021, consumer) SSDs )?ecclesiastes121314 - Wednesday, February 23, 2022 - link
2 ram slots? I've seen this on a few of these new DDR5 boards. Most people here are talking about Thunderbolt 4 and USB4. Yes these are very useful to a select group of people yet these can be achieved with add on cards. Then you can pay for the devices to take advantage of these technologies. Reducing ram slots from 4 to 2. Wow. Yes you can buy high density ram. But this is forcing you that direction. What is wrong with 4x16 or 4x32 ram kits? If you (me) are interested in high performance video then affordable and available ram is a huge consideration. Is it just me?