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
EVGA Z390 FTW
The second board we know that is in existence from EVGA is their slightly remodelled Z390 FTW. From a design point of view, all that seems to have changed aesthetically is the audio PCB now features a quintuplet of gold audio capacitors, the removal of some branding on the power delivery heatsink and the placement of the M.2 slots was moved around. The Z390 FTW has rather 'basic' look with an all-black PCB complemented with brushed aluminium styled VRM heatsinks and a black ridged chipset heatsink.
On the PCB of the Z390 FTW, the PCIe layout looks identical with two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots running at x16 and x8, with a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot located at the bottom. An additional two PCIe 3.0 x1 are featured and the board looks to feature two M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slots with a Key-E slot present which is more an inclusion for users looking to add Wi-Fi capability to the board. The Z390 FTW also features six SATA ports with native support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays.
While the extent of the componentry and controller set is currently unknown due to a lack of specification from EVGA at present, from what we can see we know the rear panel includes a total of eight USB Type-A ports, a combo PS/2 port, a single LAN port, what looks like either a clear CMOS or BIOS Flashback button and a set of onboard audio connectors; most likely powered by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec which the Z370 FTW features.
We do not currently know what EVGA plans with its Z390 FTW model or when it will be available if it's not already available at the time of reading. The Z390 has a near identical feature set to the previous Z370 FTW from a visual once-over, but once the official specifications and availability are known, we will update this section.
Update 10/09:
We now know the EVGA Z390 FTW has an 11-phase power delivery as stated by EVGA themselves and offers support for both Intel's 8th generation and 9th generation Core i3/i5/i7/i9 processors. The PCB includes an onboard clear CMOS switch, a power button, a reset switch and an onboard CPU temperature monitor. The Z390 FTW will have a 3-year warranty and will also include an SPI flashing port which allows users to flash the BIOS with a USB stick without requiring a CPU. The EVGA Z390 FTW also features a Realtek 7.1-channel HD audio codec with EVGA NU audio support and an Intel-based Gigabit NIC.
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Valantar - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
That would be pretty shocking, yeah, but the sheer size of that lump of metal still has me a bit worried. Guess that's what you get when you try to squeeze power delivery for a CPU that (likely) pulls >300W when overclocked into an ITX board (and refuse to use riser boards like before, for some reason).FXi - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
The power feed also changed with z390 I believe at least in the Asus models it did. The power feed of the 370 was "enough" to drive the newer 9700/9900 but there is a difference there that may impact enthusiasts. I don't think it enough to warrant an upgrade but something to consider.Also people should remember that while it is still a bit of a ways off, wifi is going to change to Wifi6 or 802.11ax starting now and probably seeing much of the changeover during 2019/2020 depending on adoption choices. And there is also pci-e 4.0 to consider next year probably that should be thought about before people do "marginal" upgrades from 370 era chipsets.
FXi - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Silly thing posted in edit window. Sorry power delivery and other points covered by you. Would have edited if I could have found that optionDanNeely - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Other things to look forward to in the next few generations are: Less-hacky USB3.1 implementations (eg this articles speculation that a 10g port will need to eat 2 HSIO lanes instead of 1, and still needing an extra chip to support USB-C). Spectre/Meltdown fixes in hardware. A reduced DMI bottleneck between the CPU and chipset (either just from upgrading the link to PCIe4/5, moving some of the peripheral IO onto the CPU, or both.Valantar - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
Considering that the maximum theoretical bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 x1 is 984.6MB/s, you _need_ two PCIe lanes (and thus two HSIO lanes) for a USB 3.1G2 (1.25GB/s) controller unless you want to significantly bottleneck it. That's not "hacky", that's reality, even if this leaves a lot of bandwidth "on the table" if this only powers a single port (which it rarely does, though, and given that a full load on two ports at one time is unlikely, running two 1.25GB/s ports off two .99GB/s lanes is a good solution).Moving DMI to PCIe 4.0 will be good, though, particularly for multiple NVMe SSDs and >GbE networking.
DanNeely - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
Splitting the traffic over 2 HSIO lanes is a hack because it'd require something to split/combine the traffic between the chipset and usbport. That in turn has me wondering if the speculation about the implementation being done that way is correct, or if the Z390 has 6 HSIO lanes that can run 10Gbps instead of the 8 that the rest top out at for PCIe3repoman27 - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
The implementation is absolutely not done that way. HSIO lanes are simply differential signaling pairs connected to a PCIe switch or various controllers via a mux. The PCH has a 6-port USB 3.1 Gen 2 xHCI, which can only feed 6 HSIO muxes. The back end of that xHCI is connected to an on-die PCIe switch which in turn is connected to the DMI interface. That DMI 3.0 x4 interface is already massively oversubscribed, but it is at least equivalent to a PCIe 3.0 x4 link, which is the most bandwidth that can be allotted to a single PCH connected device.Srikzquest - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
HDMI 2.0 is available in Asus and Gigabyte's ITX boards as well.gavbon - Tuesday, October 9, 2018 - link
Thank you Srikzquest; updated the tables, obviously missed this yesterday :) - Thanks againHickorySwitch - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Correction:https://www.asus.com/us/Commercial-Servers-Worksta...
It says under "Specifications" that the board sports HDMI 2.0[b?]