The Intel Z690 Motherboard Overview (DDR5): Over 50+ New Models
by Gavin Bonshor on November 9, 2021 9:00 AM ESTASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Glacial & Z690 Extreme (DDR5)
Starting off the ASUS Z690 product stack with support for the latest DDR5 memory, we have an equally impressive pair of flagships for users to sink their teeth into. It should be noted for Z690, ASUS has tweaked its naming scheme for its Maximus branded board. Typically in the past, it has used roman numerals to depict the series, but in the interests of making it simple for users to digest, it now opts to use the specific chipset name instead; hooray for simplicity.
The first of the aforementioned flagships is the latest Extreme motherboard from ASUS, specifically the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Glacial. It shares the same feature and controller set as the regular ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme model, but with one major difference, The Extreme Glacial has a brand new custom 'Ultrablock' designed and manufactured by premium water cooling experts EKWB, which includes plenty of integrated RGB LED lighting and looks very premium indeed. Both include dot matrix displays built into the rear panel over, while the non-water block clad ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme model, it includes a dot matrix panel covering the chipset heatsink too.
The ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Glacial (left) and Z690 Extreme (right) motherboards
Both the ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme Glacial and ROG Maximus Z690 Extreme share the same feature and controller set, with both featuring two full-length PCIe 5.0 slots operating at x16 or x8/x8, with a smaller PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. In the top right-hand corner of both models are four memory slots with support for up to DDR5-6400, with a maximum supported capacity of up to 128 GB. Also in the top right-hand corner is a DIMM.2 slot, with combined total support for up to five M.2 drives, including one PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 and four PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 drives, with six SATA ports supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays.
On the rear panel of both models is lots of premium connectivity, including one Thunderbolt 4 Type-C, one USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C, and eight USB 3.2 G2 Type-A ports. ASUS does include an HDMI video output for users, as well as a Marvel AQtion 10 GbE controller, with a secondary RJ45 port powered by an Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controller. Wireless capabilities are provided by an unspecified Intel Wi-Fi 6E CNVi, which also supports BT 5.2 devices. For onboard audio, five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output are powered by a Supreme FX4082 HD audio codec and ESS Sabre 9018Q2C DAC pairing, while ASUS also includes a BIOS Flashback button and clear CMOS button.
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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.