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 WS Z390 Pro
Outside of the gaming-centric offerings on the new Z390 chipset, the ASUS WS Z390 Pro is one of the most comprehensive with a massive set of specifications and feature-rich list that makes this a very attractive high-end option. Stylistically the board has a subtle black and silver theme throughout with a glossy silver chipset heatsink. The WS stands for workstation and is designed specifically for professional users looking to build a high powered multi-core system with one of the higher end Intel Core i9- 9900K processors. The biggest feature of the WS Z390 Pro is in its ability to run up to four-way SLI thanks to four Safe Slot protected full-length PCIe 3.0 slots. The top two operate with a bandwidth of x16/x16 with two cards installed, x16/x8/x8 with three cards and x8/x8/x8/x8 with four graphics cards. Although the WS Z390 Pro has no PCIe 3.0 x1 slots to speak of, it has a single PCIe 3.0 x4 slot located between the full-length slots.
The storage options of the WS Z390 Pro includes three M.2 PCIe 3.0 slots with two of them having support for SATA drives too; also present is six SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays. The WS Z390 Pro also features two U.2 ports. The board is equipped with four RAM slots with support for DDR4-4266 and a total capacity of up to 64 GB. A total of six 4-pin PWM enabled headers are located on the board and ASUS has included two 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power inputs for overclockers to make use of.
The WS Z390 Pro focuses less on gaming orientated features and more on professional elements with a Realtek S1200A HD audio codec powered the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output. The rear panel also features dual Intel Gigabit LAN with an Intel I21LM and Intel I210AT Gigabit NIC. A total of ten USB ports are located on the rear panel which is split into five USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C and four USB 2.0 ports. At the far left-hand side is a DisplayPort and HDMI 2.0b pair of video outputs and the WS Z390 Pro has a handily located BIOS Flashback button on the rear panel too.
As expected the WS Z390 Pro will most certainly be one of the most expensive Z390 ASUS boards at launch, with the pricing currently unknown and looks set to offer prosumers a four-way SLI capable desktop offering from one of the biggest brands in the industry. The USB 3.1 Gen2 integration in the Z390 chipset has been made to great use and the WS Z390 Pro offers the one of the most comprehensively implemented feature-sets on the entirety of the chipset. It's slightly disappointing that there's no 5 G or 10 G Aquantia LAN to be seen and this would have been a much-welcomed feature for workstation users to sink their teeth into.
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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.