Intel Z390 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Analyzed
by Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on October 8, 2018 10:53 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
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- Gigabyte
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- Z390
GIGABYTE Z390 I Aorus Pro WIFI
GIGABYTE has also pulled the trigger on its mini-ITX Z390 motherboard, the Z390 I Aorus Pro WIFI. This particular board follows the same design as the Z390 Aorus Elite with gunmetal grey metallic heatsinks and an all-black PCB. There are RGB LEDs on this board and they are located exclusively on the right-hand side of the board, just underneath the 24-pin ATX motherboard power input. The two available RAM slots support up to DDR4-4133 and offer a maximum capacity of up to 32 GB.
The mini-ITX sized I Aorus Pro WIFI has a single full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slot which is coated with metal slot protection and GIGABYTE advertise this board as having a 6+2 phase power delivery equipped with 40 A PowIRstages; delivering power to the CPU is a single 8-pin ATX 12 V power input. Storage options include a pair of M.2 slots with one located on the front of the PCB and features an integrated heatsink; the second port is on the rear of the PCB and both offer support for PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA based drives.
On the back panel of the GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus I Pro WIFI is a couple of interesting inclusions. Firstly the board includes a high spec HDMI 2.0 video output with a single DisplayPort output too. Also included is antenna connectors for the Wave 2 1.73 Gbps supported 2T2R Wi-Fi adapter along with a single Intel I219V Gigabit powered LAN port. The board includes two USB 3.1 Gen2 ports which consist of a Type-A and Type-C, with a further four USB 3.0 Type-A ports; at the left-hand side of the rear panel is a front panel connector for an additional USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port. The last set of connections consist of five 3.5 mm audio jacks and a single S/PDIF optical output which is powered by a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec.
The GIGABYTE Z390 I Aorus Pro WIFI is a solid looking mini-ITX option with a focus on gaming, but with the potential to be a good overclocking performer; on paper. The rear panel cover looks classy and the board has plenty of top-level features which is always nice to see given that most vendors only release one mini-ITX board per chipset, so it's ever important to get the right balance between price, performance and features. The GIGABYTE Z390 I Aorus Pro WIFI has an MSRP of $165
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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.