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
ASUS TUF Z390M Pro Gaming & Z390M Pro Gaming Wi-Fi
The TUF Z390M Pro Gaming is the smaller mATX sibling of the above ASUS Z390 Pro Gaming and as a result, features much of the same black and grey design with yellow accents. The main differences between the ATX and mATX sized TUF Pro Gaming motherboards are the smaller model has two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which run at x16 or x8/x4 and ASUS has only included one PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. The maximum memory the Z390M Pro Gaming supports is DDR4-4266 and the board does offer four RAM slots with a maximum support capacity of up to 64 GB.
Storage capability on the TUF Z390M Pro Gaming M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA supported slots with one of the slots being supplemented with an M.2 heatsink. This mATX sized board keeps all six SATA ports which are split into two different sections; three straight-angled ports at the bottom right-hand edge of the board, with three right-angled ports on the right-hand side underneath the 24-pin ATX motherboard power input.
ASUS TUF Z390M Pro Gaming (WI-Fi) Rear Panel
With the only differences between the TUF Z390M Pro Gaming and Z390 Pro Gaming (Wi-Fi) being the latter has an Intel 9560 2T2R Wave 2 supported 802.11ac adapter; take this out of the equation and the rest of the rear panel and specifications are exactly the same. A total of six USB ports comprised of one USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, one USB 3.0 Type-C and four USB 3.0 Type-A ports is featured, as well as HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs. A pair of PS/2 ports with one for a keyboard and the other for a mouse sitting at the left-hand side of the rear panel, an Intel I219V Gigabit controlled LAN port and basic three 3.5 mm port powered Realtek S1200A HD audio codec completes the capacity of the panel.
The ASUS TUF Z390M Pro Gaming pricing us yet to be revealed but it's expected that the TUF Z390M Pro Gaming Wi-Fi will command a higher premium with an Intel 9560 MU-MIMO Wave2 Wi-Fi adapter included. The pairing of mATX form factor boards aims at the lower end of the mid-range segment and without too much going on, users looking for a more comprehensive mATX board may look to the more expensive ROG Maximus XI Gene or another competitors offering.
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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.