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
MSI MAG Z390 Tomahawk
The MSI MAG or 'Arsenal' range is somewhat unchained and features the more militaristic sounding boards such as this one, the MAG Z390 Tomahawk. The Tomahawk has an overall black and silver theme throughout with a very solid looking silver grey for the heatsinks and rear panel cover. The board does utilize basic RGB LED lighting across the chipset heatsink and the underneath of the 24-pin motherboard power connector and can be customized with MSI's Mystic Light RGB software.
The board has a total of three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots with the slots running at x16, x4 and x4; only the top slot gets MSI's Steel Slot reinforcement. In addition to this is a pair of PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. The Z390 Tomahawk has four RAM slots with support for DDR4-4400 with a total capacity of up to 64 GB. Featured for storage are six SATA ports and two M.2 slots which both have support for PCIe and SATA drives; the bottom slot includes an M.2 heatshield.
On the rear panel is three USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A ports and a single USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C, which also includes two USB 2.0 ports. Users looking to increase the number of USB ports can do so through the use of internal headers which opens up to an additional four USB 3.0 and four USB 2.0 ports. The MAG Z390 Tomahawk has dual NIC with a pairing if Intel Gigabit controllers (I219V and I211AT), with the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and single S/PDIF optical output taking its orders from a Realtek ALC892 HD audio codec. Users looking to utilize the iGPU on the 8th and new 9th generation Intel processors can do so thanks to the inclusion of a DisplayPort and HDMI video output.
The MAG Z390 Tomahawk represents a more modest offering from MSI and while the inclusion of dual NIC is a clear intent that MSI is going all out with their low to mid-range boards at present, users looking to make use of two-way SLI configurations will have to opt for one of the more expensive MPG range boards. The MAG Z390 Tomahawk is priced at $160 which kind of defeats the purpose of an entry range of boards especially when pricing is above the model such as the MPG Z390 Gaming Plus.
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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.