The Intel Z690 Motherboard Overview (DDR5): Over 50+ New Models
by Gavin Bonshor on November 9, 2021 9:00 AM ESTASUS ProArt Z690 Creator WIFI (DDR5)
Designed primarily for content creators, but more than adequately adapt for the foundation to any type of desktop system a user may wish to create, ASUS has its ProArt series. Some of the ProArt series main features include Thunderbolt connectivity for super-fast transfer speeds and typically features a more reserved and elegant aesthetic. The ASUS ProArt Z690 Creator WIFI ticks all of these boxes, with a primarily black theme with elements of goldish colored and white contrasting lines on the heatsinks. ASUS opts to neglect RGB LED lighting here and goes for a more subtle styling throughout.
Dominating the lower section of the ATX-sized PCB is a trio of full-length PCIe slots. The top two full-length slots both support PCIe 5.0, with the slots operating at either x16 or x8/x8, with the third full-length slot along the bottom electronically locked down to PCIe 3.0 x4. For storage, ASUS includes a total of four M.2 slots, with three offering support for PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives, and the fourth slot capable of supporting both PCIe 4.0 x4 and SATA varieties. There are also eight SATA ports with all of these allowing for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays to be built. Memory support is provided by four memory slots, with speeds of up to DDR5-6000 supported, with a combined capacity of up to 128 GB.
On the rear panel of the ASUS ProArt Z690 Creator WIFI are two Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports and a total of six USB 3.2 G2 Type-A ports. There's also a pair of DisplayPort video inputs for Thunderbolt 4, as well as a single HDMI 2.1 video output for users looking to use integrated graphics. The board's onboard audio capabilities consist of five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output powered by a SupremeFX S1220A HD audio codec, while ASUS also includes a Marvel AQtion 10 GbE and Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controller pairing for wired networking. Wireless capability comes from a Wi-Fi 6E CNVi, with additional support for BT 5.2 devices. Finishing off the rear panel is a small BIOS Flashback button.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
126 Comments
View All Comments
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
Except DirectStorage actually exists in the XBox Series X. Once the XBSX native games start getting ported things will start to move.Bp_968 - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - link
Why fill my pc with loud and hot hard drives? I have 2 M.2 sticks as local storage and a NAS for all the rust drives in another room. I wouldn't want to go back to the days of using my PC for that.And if you must have tons of sata just buy a SAS card. Their cheap and flexible. Each SAS port on the card fans out to 4 sata ports using a cheap cable.
The Von Matrices - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
Since the 100 series chipsets, the lanes for the SATA ports are shared with other things, so you aren't getting dedicated ports like you used to. You have to disable other features if you want to use all the SATA ports. With my current Z390 board, I can't use more than 2 SATA ports without compromising on other features, and I can't use all 6 SATA ports unless I disable both M.2 slots. Since they're sharing lanes, there's little cost and little reason to not have them, and that will probably continue into the future.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
Things have changed the last couple of generations. My Z690 board has 6 SATA ports and 4 PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots. The only thing shared is SATA between one SATA port and one of the M.2 slots. As long as you don't need a M.2 SATA drive, you can run 4 NVMe drives and 6 SATA devices simultaneously..KarlKastor - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - link
There has nothing changed. The IO-Lanes of the chipset can eather be SATA or PCIe. The reason why you have nothing shared is, because they saved money for switches. You have not the option how to use this Lanes.This happens since Rocket Lake. The CPU has additional PCIe lanes, so you don't need to share much anymore and the Board is full already. There is no space for more M.2. Backside maybe.
12345 - Monday, November 15, 2021 - link
Z690 has a x8 gen 4 link to the chipset now. You don't have to disable SATA anymore to use all m.2 slots.meacupla - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
I am pretty sure intel had 8 SATA ports since Z77, but board manufacturers routed 2 SATA ports for m.2 SATA. The On Z87 and Z97, 8 SATA ports with 2 ports shared for m.2 SATA was totally a thing.KarlKastor - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - link
The silicon has 8 ports for long time. But maximum usable for the Zxy7 was 6. Eight were workstation only.If you used shared SATA on M.2, then you had less than six SATA Ports usable.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
SATA SSD sales continue to remain strong, and are much mroe economical for large file storage per TB then M.2 drives (a 2TB SATA drive is around $170 now), and if you have a RAID aray with 3+ drives speeds begin to encroah on NVMe speeds, a RAID 5 array with 4 SATA III will hit 1.6GB/s read speeds.Mr Perfect - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
Man, these Z-chipset boards keep going up in price. I'm curious what eventual H670 chipset boards will look like. If they've got everything you need without all the flashy bits, I'll probably shoot for one of those.