Intel Z390 Motherboard Review Collection
With a 16 Phase IR Digital VRM, Thunderbolt 3, Aquantia 10GbE LAN and an Aorus all-in-one custom Monoblock, the Z390 Extreme Waterforce is designed for extreme performance and overclocking. But, at a price of around $1,000 USD, is it worth the money? We ran the Z390 Extreme Waterforce through every test in our suite of benchmarks in an attempt to answer that very question. So, let’s see how the Z390 Extreme Waterforce did.
Read more @ Modders Inc
With the Z390 chipset, the MEG Z390 ACE as an ATX board supports the eighth and ninth generation Intel core processors (Coffee Lake-S Refresh). Native USB 3.1 support is already on board, so other additional chips can be omitted. The motherboard offers three PCIe x16 slots, but only one of them is connected to the chipset with all 16 lanes, while the other two are eight and eight respectively.
Read more @ Igor’s Lab
That processor, however, is more power-hungry than its predecessors and motherboard vendors have necessarily responded with higher-end power circuitry. MSI’s Enthusiast Gaming (MEG) ACE motherboard crystallises this approach with 12 phases purely aimed at powering all eight cores with overclocking.
Read more @ KitGuru
The Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Extreme is one of the most expensive motherboards that you can buy for an Intel Z390 system. It’ll set you back a vast $550 in the US and £500 in the UK – which makes it more expensive than many of the processors, GPUs and other components that you may end up installing into a build. Can it possibly be worth so much? Read our Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme review to find out.
Read more @ Hardware Heaven
In this review we’ll be looking at one of the Apex predators when it comes to overclocking who is docile out of the box and can unleash the fury when it is time to shine. The ASUS Republic of Gamers Maximus XI APEX is the latest version of APEX motherboards designed to be the top of the line when it comes to performance potential.
Read more @ Hardware Asylum
The board sports an 11-phase power array with five doubled phases (10 if we’re feeling generous) dealing with the CPU and one for the integrated graphics. The heatsinks aren’t heat pipe-linked to even-out the heat load, but they’re reasonably substantial.
Read more @ Bit-Tech
As the name would suggest, the ASUS TUF Z390-Pro Gaming is part of the TUF Gaming Alliance, a collaboration spearheaded by ASUS to produce a family of hardware with a common visual theme and exceptional quality and durability. Now, if someone had tried to sell me, sight unseen, on a black/gray and yellow color scheme with digital cameo accents, I would have had trouble taking them seriously.
Read more @ TechPowerUp
EVGA’s motherboards have long held a strong following within the PC DIY community. EVGA maintains a relatively small motherboard portfolio by the standards of its competitors, just a handful of motherboards per chipset, containing models specifically for overclockers and gamers alike. EVGA simply does not do a “low-end” or “entry-level” motherboard for Z390, as the Z390 FTW intends to demonstrate.
Read more @ KitGuru
The board is very much over engineered, which is a good thing for those looking to push their CPUs and other hardware to the limits with overclocks. It features an 18 Phase VRM (16 for the CPU), massive heatsinks, every major fitting is armoured and reinforced, and you’ve got all the latest and greatest when it comes to connectivity too.
Read more @ eTeknix
This board has a lean and mean look about it, even menacing in a way, with its mostly black aesthetic with silver highlights scattered about. Its VRM heatsink even carries a yin-yang motif, with the black sink at the top and silver to the left of the CPU socket…
Read more @ HotHardware