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 6
The ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 6 sits below the Phantom Gaming 9 and Taichi boards in the product stack and offers similar features and design aspects, but at a lower price point. The Phantom Gaming 6 remains ATX and has the same RGB capabilities as the Phantom Gaming 9 and users would be hard pressed to tell which is which if they didn't already know; the chipset heatsinks are a slightly different shape, the power and reset buttons are this time located at the top and the Gaming 6 has an extra PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. Speaking more of PCIe, the Gaming 6 has three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots all coated in ASRock Steel Slot reinforcement and the slots operate at x16, x8 and x4 respectively.
In regards to storage, the Z390 Phantom Gaming 6 has a total of eight SATA ports and has two M.2 slots which both allow for PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA based drives to be installed. The board also has four RAM slots with support for up to DDR4-4266 and the capacity for up to a maximum capacity of up to 64 GB Unlike the Phantom Gaming 9 which has eight fan headers, the Phantom Gaming 6 has a reduced number with a total of five 4-pin headers available. Along the bottom of the board is an LED debug and ASRock advertises the board as having a 12-phase power delivery with an 8-pin and 4-pin 12 V ATX CPU set of power inputs which is mirrored from the Gaming 9; the board looks to be the same PCB, but with different componentry.
For the Z390 Phantom Gaming 6, ASRock has dropped one of the three LAN ports (Phantom Gaming 9) and equipped this board with two which consist of an Intel I211AT Gigabit and better grade Realtek RTL8125AG 2.5G LAN. The Phantom Gaming 6 also drops Wi-Fi support and some of the rear panel USB 3.1 Gen2 ports with a total of two composed of a Type-A and Type-C port; rounding off the USB is three USB 3.0 Type-A ports. A Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec is included which offers five 3.5mm audio jacks and a single S/PDIF optical output and a trio of video outputs comprised of an HDMI, D-sub and DisplayPort.
The ASRock Z390 Phantom 6 has a recommended retail price of $200 which sets this as one of the most feature-rich in its price point, especially with dual LAN including a 2.5G port. The board does lack Wi-Fi connectivity but for users looking to drop some features and ultimately the price, but keeping much of the same componentry and quality features as the $270 Z390 Phantom Gaming 9, the $70 price reduction seems fair.
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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.