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
ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4
With the Z390 Phantom Gaming 4, ASRock has dropped the flashy LED lighting integrated into the heatsinks and offers users a further cut-down version at an entry-level price point ($140). The Z390 Phantom Gaming 4 keeps the same black and grey PCB theme, it removes the rear panel cover from the other Phantom Gaming boards outlined above and removes one of the power delivery heatsinks; this model is advertised as having a lower spec 10-phase power delivery. Also omitted from the Z390 Phantom Gaming 4 is Steel Slot protection. The board has two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which run at x16 and x4 respectively, along with a total of three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. Users looking to run SLI on a budget will need to look at ASRock's Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI board which is similar but costs $20 more.
The memory capability of the Z390 Phantom Gaming 4 consists of support for up to 64 GB of DDR4 memory and up to DDR4-4300. The board offers six SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays. Included are two PCIe 3.0 x and SATA compatible M.2 slots and on the cooling front, the Z390 Phantom Gaming 4 offers a total of four 4-pin fan headers.
On the rear panel, the Z390 Phantom Gaming 4 has two USB 3.1 Gen2 consisting of a single Type-A and Type-C port with two USB 3.0 Type-A and USB 2.0 ports. A single LAN port powered by an Intel I219V Gigabit networking controller and the three 3.5 mm audio controlled by a Realtek ALC892 HD codec are also featured. Just like the Z390 Phantom Gaming 6, the Z390 Phantom Gaming 4 has a trifecta of video outputs which are comprised of a D-sub, a DisplayPort and a single HDMI output.
With a much lower entry point into the market than the bigger Phantom Gaming 6 and 9 motherboards, the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4 has a price of $140 which makes it the third cheapest Z390 board in ASRock's current SKU list and with Intel Gigabit LAN and a mid-ranged Realtek ALC892 codec, the Gaming 4 is seemingly targeted at gamers not looking to spend allocated budget on flashy aspects such as RGB and SLI support, but instead sticks to the important core componentry with minimal fuss.
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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.