ASRock Z490 Motherboard Series Pictured

[btarunr]

Here are some of the first pictures of ASRock's upcoming socket LGA1200 motherboards based on the Intel Z490 chipset, courtesy VideoCardz. The selection of pics reveal the company's flagship Z490 motherboard to be the Z490 Taichi, with its elaborate CPU VRM solution that pulls power from a pair of 8-pin EPS connectors, a metal shroud covering most of the board, including the heatsinks over the three M.2 slots and the PCH; and an elaborate CPU VRM heatsink assembly. Connectivity options include 2.5 GbE, 802.11ax, and preparation for Thunderbolt. The company is planning two other flagship models, the Z490 Phantom Gaming X and the Z490 Aqua.

The next best motherboard in this photo dump is the Z490 Phantom Gaming Velocita, which appears to have an identical CPU VRM muscle as the Taichi, but just two M.2 slots instead of three. It still gets two wired networking interfaces. The Z490 Phantom Gaming ITX TB3 is the Mini-ITX flagship board by the company, featuring integrated Thunderbolt, an active fan-heatsink cooling the CPU VRM, and a daughterboard putting out some of the board's connectivity.




The Z490 Extreme4 and Z490 Steel Legend are based on a common PCB design, with only cosmetic changes setting the two apart. You get a couple of M.2 NVMe slots, a single 2.5 GbE interface, and some RGB embellishments on both. Likewise, the Z490 Pro4 and Z490 Phantom Gaming 4 share a common PCB, featuring a basic 12-phase VRM, a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot, 6-channel audio, and possibly just a 1 GbE interface.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Upgrayedd]

Dang was hoping to see the OC Formula.

 

[BArms]

Do all those diagonal lines make them faster?

 

[Caring1]

Do all those diagonal lines make them faster?

If it does, then the ugly line up from Asus must be really fast.

 

[BSim500]

So Phantom Gaming ITX gets dumbed down to just 5x USB ports (whilst even 4x generations old Skylake H110I boards had 6x), plus that has to be the single-most dumbest position I've ever seen SATA ports placed. And now they need active fans too? Meanwhile the Steel Legend continues the stupidly dumb decision of having a full sized board missing half of the normal screw holes that the B365M Phantom Gaming similarly lacked leading to negative reviews on multiple sites complaining of how the edge of the board is left floating and unnaturally bends when inserting / removing the largest 24-pin plug due to not being properly secured to the case? The only thing these pics do is reinforce to me how motherboard design peaked somewhere around 2014-2016 and it's been continuously downhill ever since...

 

[ppn]

Shameful display, Extreme4 also floating, but I guess a plastic dummy can be used there cut in its upper half and placed behind the motherboard for support.

 

[BSim500]

Shameful display, Extreme4 also floating, but I guess a plastic dummy can be used there cut in its upper half and placed behind the motherboard for support.

Sticking something non-conductive behind the boards floating edge works vs pushing down but pulling up (eg, removing a particularly stiff 24-pin power connector) still unnaturally bends the motherboard upwards putting undue stress on various track layers surrounding the memory slots / chipset area. "Professional" reviewers that give cr*p like this +90% because "mah arr-gee-bee lighting" need to go back to basics (like expecting screw-holes to actually match the case form-factor) as quite honestly, any other component where you had to finish building it yourself, eg, a wonky monitor that required something placed underneath one leg to stop it falling off a desk, or wedging a piece of cardboard inside a printer's feed tray so that it finally feeds paper in straight without jamming but was still given 100% scores purely because the outside plastic lit up like an Xmas tree would (and should) be laughed at (both the product and the "reviewer").