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
GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Elite
The GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Elite is a little more 'basic' in terms of aesthetics than the Z390 Aorus Master and although the board has a similar rear panel cover and features integrated RGB LED lighting, the Z390 Aorus Elite belongs to the low to mid-range of Z390 options available. As per GIGABYTE's new naming scheme, one thing we do know is that the Z390 Aorus Elite replaces the Z370 Aorus Gaming 3 in the low-end Z390 entry segment. Official memory support out of the box consists of DDR4-4133 with up to 64 GB supported across four available RAM slots.
On the rear panel, GIGABYTE has included two USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, four USB 3.0 Type-A and four USB 2.0 ports. Also featured are a single HDMI video output and a single LAN port controlled by an Intel I219V Gigabit networking chip. The onboard audio is directed by a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec and offers a total of five 3.5mm audio jacks and a single S/PDIF optical output.
Like the majority of the boards in GIGABYTEs Z390 product stack, the Z390 Aorus Elite is advertised as having a 13-phase power delivery in a 12+1 configuration. The board has two full-length PCIe slots with the top slot with support for two-way CrossFire configurations. In addition to the full-length slots is a total of three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. In terms of storage, the Z390 Aorus Elite has a total of two M.2 slots with the top slot getting treated to an M.2 heat shield. As with most Z390 motherboards, there is a total of six SATA ports which allows for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays to be utilized.
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The Z390 Aorus Elite is targeted more towards gamers on a budget with an MSRP of $180 and as previously mentioned, replaces the Z370 Aorus Gaming 3 in GIGABYTEs previous product stack making this the cheapest of their Z390 gaming themed ATX sized motherboards. There is no scope for SLI due to bandwidth restrictions on the second full-length PCIe 3.0 x4 slot (SLI requires x8 minimum), but users planning on running an AMD based graphics card can effectively double if they so wish.
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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.