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
GIGABYTE Z390 UD (Ultra Durable)
The GIGABYTE Z390 UD or Z390 Ultra Durable motherboard is ATX in size and drops all of the gaming branding and fluff associated with that for a cleaner and basic looking board. The black PCB has grey side sweeping straight patterning across the majority and combines it with the chipset heatsink. The board has a total of three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots with the top slot which is covered in metal slot protection supporting x16 and the two other bare full-length slots operating at x4; the board also features three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. The board also has the same 8 and 4-pin 12V ATX power inputs as the Z390 Gaming SLI, Z390 Gaming X and Z390M Gaming models.
Storage wise the Z390 UD has a total of six SATA ports which are comprised of two right-angled connectors, with another bank of four featuring straight-angle connectors sitting just below. Above the PCIe slots is a single M.2 slot which supports both PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA drives. For the memory up to a total of 64 GB can be installed across the four available RAM slots, with official XMP profiling currently being unannounced.
On the rear panel of the Z390 UD is a total of six USB 3.0 Type-A ports, a pair of PS/2 ports for a keyboard and mouse and an HDMI video output. This board drops any USB 3.1 Gen2 connectivity to shave on costs and isn't just the only GIGABYTE board to do so, but it's also using a cheaper Realtek ALC887 audio codec and Realtek RTL8111H Gigabit networking controller to power three 3.5 mm audio jacks and the single LAN port.
Without much pizazz and the gaming designed feature set, the Z390 UD (Ultra Durable) is targeted more towards budget systems and more professional users who aren't looking to spend extra budget on features deemed unnecessary which may for all intents and purposes remain unused. The Z390 UD costs $130 and as it stands, is the cheapest offering from GIGABYTE on Z390 as it represents one of the more modest entry-level Z390 offerings from any of the motherboard vendors at launch.
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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.