Intel Z390 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Analyzed
by Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on October 8, 2018 10:53 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- MSI
- Gigabyte
- ASRock
- EVGA
- Asus
- NZXT
- Supermicro
- Z390
ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac
One of two mini-ITX offerings from ASRock for the launch of the Z390 includes the gaming-centric Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac. The ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac follows an all-black design with speckly metallic heatsinks which includes RGB LED lighting at the bottom of the board. The main features include an Intel-based Gigabit LAN (I219V) and 2T2R Wave 2 802.11ac capable wi-fi adapter pairing and this board is one of the only Z390 motherboards to include a Thunderbolt 3Type-C port on the rear panel. The cooling capabilities are hindered slightly due to the form factor with a total of three 4-pin fan headers with two-thirds located along the top. There is an 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power input and ASRock advertises an 8-phase power delivery; the SoC area of the power delivery is without a heatsink.
As the Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac is smaller it makes use of a single ASRock Steel Slot clad full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slot with an M.2 slot located just above which offers support for PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA, while ASRock combines the chipset and M.2 heatsink as one to save space, but still offer the heat dissipation quality for hot running NVMe based drives. A second PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA slot is located on the rear of the boards PCB, while a total of four SATA ports with straight-angled connectors are located towards the bottom right of the board. Memory support consists of two slots with a maximum capacity of up to 32 GB and support for up to DDR4-4266.
The rear panel of the Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac motherboard offers a quality range of connections which puts a lot of boards to shame in this regard. Included is a Thunderbolt 3 Type-C ports with a total of four USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A and two USB 3.0 Type-A ports. A single LAN port powered by an Intel I219V Gigabit networking chip is present along with five 3.5 mm audio jacks and a single S/PDIF optical output which is controlled by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec. For users looking to use this board with integrated graphics, the Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac has two video outputs consisting of a DVI-D and an HDMI 2.0 outputFinishing off the rear panel is two connectors for the 2T2R Wave 2 802.11ac capable Wi-Fi antenna, a PS/2 combo port and a conveniently placed reset CMOS button.
In terms of pricing, the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac has an MSRP of $190 which is cheaper than I was expecting given the sheer amount of high-end features have been packed onto the PCB. The inclusion of a Thunderbolt 3 Type-C along with four USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A ports shows that where space has been used, it's been used to good effect; one of the benefits of the Z390 chipset is native USB 3.1 Gen2. A solid looking (visually) power delivery and with 2T2R Wave 2 802.11ac wireless capability marks another mini-ITX ASRock board aimed at the high-end enthusiast; I am personally very interested in seeing how this board performs as I'm a big fan of mini-ITX boards.
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Chaitanya - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
That video advert on pages is stupid pain in rear side to say the least when reading through all those pages.Mr Perfect - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
The "How to pick a CPU" video? If you pay close attention to it, it's actually Anandtech content.That being said, they'll probably be fine with you ad-blocking it. Blocking content doesn't affect ad revenue, right? ;)
leexgx - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
I just opened the site in edge now so I could block them as very distracting and annoying (as well as the scam ads between the article and comments section that I have to scroll past )edwpang - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
I tried not to block ads, but I cannot bear the sight of some pictures and videos.imaheadcase - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
I don't understand how anandtech would allow the scam ads to appear on here, its prob the #1 reason i use a adblock in the first place. The only reason i know about it is from phone, when i first saw them i was like "wtf is this shit".I guess anandtech doesn't think its ads reflect its site.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
If you guys are encountering issues with the ads, please reach out to me and let me know. Ads fall under a different department in Future, but if there are specific problems then I can at least pass those along to get them addressed.Ananke - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
The ads /the video/ are super annoying - its the same style as Tom's Hardware, apparently as business has been merged. The slotted video, or the minimized video screen upon changing the tab size for example makes me avoiding Anandtech and Tom's alltogether, after reading it for 20 years /yeah, since Anand was a teenager and started it as a blog/. I am multitasking, and I can't read when screen is smaller, and I use smaller screen at work, because you know, I work.hoohoo - Thursday, October 11, 2018 - link
Hi Ryan,The Choose a CPU video is auto-play. On a phone or mobile device this is obnoxious for two reasons: (1) it uses a lot of bandwidth and mobile plans usually have a cap on data above which the reader must pay extra; (2) when the video plays it either pauses any already playing media (mp3 player on the phone) or just plays in addition to the existing media, both are irritating.
Please explain to your ad people that auto-play video is not nice.
Valantar - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
It's likely the camera/render angle playing tricks on me, but the VRM heatsink/rear I/O shroud on the ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming looks like it'll interfere with GPUs with backplates ...The Chill Blueberry - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
It's most likely just the camera angle. see how the top of the rear I/O is sticking out over the board. A big company like Asus couldn't forget about such an important detail.