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
The ASUS ROG Strix range of motherboards slot right in between the Maximus XI and TUF Gaming ranges but with a mixture of features and traits from both ranges to keep pricing competitive with other vendors mid-range offerings. These affordable models do have a good range of overclocking, but without the extreme components and more importantly, without the larger price tags associated with the higher echelon of Maximus XI models.
ASUS ROG Strix Z390-E Gaming
The ASUS ROG Strix Z390-E is another Z370 model to get an overhaul of sorts ready for the new 9th generation Intel processors. The newer Strix Z390-E looks relatively similar in terms of PCB space. The main differences come visually with the new Z390-E having primarily black themed heatsinks with a customizable RGB ROG logo with ROG Edge holographic branding towards the bottom of the rear panel cover. The chipset heatsink features the Strix branding and has a metallic grey and black monotone design.
Across the center of the board are three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which run at x16, x8 and x4 which means two-way SLI and up to three-way CrossFire multi-graphics card configurations are supported. The Z390-E also has three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots which give users one less than the previous Z370-E. Storage wise the Z390-E has two M.2 slots with one dedicated to just PCIe 3.0 x4 drives and the second allowing for both PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA drives to be used; both M.2 slots have inclusive heatsinks. The board also has a total of six SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays. There are four RAM slots with official support for up to DDR4-4266 with a total capacity of up to 64 GB.
On the rear panel of the mid-ranged Strix Z390-E Gaming is a varied selection of input and outputs. USB support consists of three USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C, two USB 3.0 Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports. A pair of video outputs consisting of a DisplayPort and HDMI are featured, along with a PS/2 combo port, an Intel I219V Gigabit controlled LAN port and connectors for the 2T2R 802.11ac Intel 9560 Wi-Fi adapter. Finishing off the rear panel is five 3.5 mm audio jacks and a single S/PDIF optical output powered by the ROG SupremeFX S1220A HD audio codec.
The ASUS ROG Strix Z390-E Gaming pricing is unknown at present and represents the most feature-rich of the Strix branded gaming motherboards. The main difference between the Z390-E Gaming and the other ATX sized Z390 Strix based models are the inclusion of the 1.73 Gbps capable Wi-Fi adapter with Bluetooth 5 connectivity support; this is one of the main reasons for the increase in price too.
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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.