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
Supermicro C9Z390-CG-IW
The fourth and final Supermicro board from the quadruplet of Z390 motherboards is the smaller sized C9Z390-CG-IW. The C9Z390-CG-IW as the name suggests takes a lot of the important elements from the ATX sized C9Z390-CG and puts it in a mini-ITX sized frame. There is a full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slot with steel slot reinforcement and the board also includes two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots; one on the front and one on the rear. Also included are four SATA ports which feature straight-angled connectors.
Usually with mini-ITX motherboards, one of the minor benefits is faster memory support due to the shorter tracks, but Supermicro is advertising the C9Z390-CG-IW to support up to DDR4-3866 which is the same as the other models barring the C9Z390-PGW which offers up to DDR4-4133. The C9Z390-CG-IW also looks to have just two 4-pin fan headers which are, unfortunately, one of the pitfalls with the mini-ITX form factor; less space usually means fewer features and headers.
Controller wise the board is using a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec to power the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output on the rear, an Intel I219V Gigabit controller for the single LAN port and a dual-band 802.11ac wireless networking adapter is also included. The rest of the rear panel is comprised of three USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C, two USB 3.0 Type-A ports, a PS/2 combo port and a pair of display outputs consisting of a DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0 ports.
The Supermicro C9Z390-CG-IW is the smallest of the four Z390 SuperO series motherboards and is designed to retain the similar power, performance and feature characteristics of the C9Z390-CG, but in a more compact mini-ITX frame. Most of what has been said looks to be true, but the obvious pitfalls come with a smaller and seemingly lower specification power delivery. This model does however retain the single 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power input and the specifications indicate the same TDP support with up to a maximum of 120 W officially support from the CPU. The pricing and availability of the C9Z390-CG-IW is yet to be announced.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
79 Comments
View All Comments
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.