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
ASUS ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming
It seems that ASUS has retired or laid the Maximus Impact branded mini-ITX boards to stud as we haven't seen one in the wild since the Z170 chipset; the ASUS Z170 Maximus VIII Impact. While the ever-popular Impact doesn't look to feature in current or future plans for that matter, users looking for a mini-ITX option from ASUS will need to look towards the ROG Strix Z390-Gaming, which in reality doesn't seem all too dissimilar aside from the regular implemented power delivery; not the vertically mounted one feature on the Impact series.
Visual aspects to note include solid grey colored heatsinks with Edge holographic branding towards the bottom of the rear panel cover and RGB lovers will be glad to know there's a customizable LED strip located on the right-hand side; underneath the 24-pin ATX motherboard power input. As expected on a mini-ITX motherboard, there's a single full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slot and the PCB space has been utilized well with a single M.2 slot with inclusive and combined chipset heatsink, as well as an additional M.2 slot on the rear. The Strix Z390-I Gaming also contains four SATA ports which feature straight angled connectors; arranged into two pairs on either side of the RAM slots.
Speaking of RAM, this board supports up to DDR4-4600 which is the fastest of any Z390 board which is one of the reasons extreme overclockers select two-slot ASUS boards as one of their main options in competitive benchmarking. Another highly notable difference in the memory compatibility is that the two RAM slots support up to 64 GB in capacity. This is in line with our expose from Zadak which is manufacturing a double height and double capacity DDR4 32 GB RAM modules with the specifications of the ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming stating that this new type of memory module is officially supported.
The mini-ITX sized ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming is one of only a small handful of Z390 motherboards to have an HDMI 2.0 video output and in addition to this, is a single DisplayPort. An Intel I219V Gigabit LAN port is present with antenna connectors for the included 2T2R Wave 2 802.11ac Intel 9560 Wi-Fi adapter. The USB looks a little lacklustre compared to the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac with two USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, two USB 3.0 Type-A, two USB 2.0 and a single USB 3.0 Type-C port; no USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C capabilities at all. The finishing touches to the Strix Z390-I Gaming is a Realtek based SupremeFX S1220A HD audio codec which powers the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output.
The ASUS ROG Strix Z390-I Gaming pricing is yet to be announced but it won't be on the cheap side, while this model looks to keep most of the high spec features from the ATX sized ROG Strix Z390-E Gaming board, but with a much smaller overall footprint. The inclusion of dual M.2 is nice, but it isn't a unique feature with other mini-ITX Z390 offerings including this.
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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.