Board Layout

If you are familiar with ASRock's Taichi line of boards, you may recognize many of the same elements here. The ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 makes use of the same VRM heatsink, M.2 heatsink, and rear I/O shroud as the Z390 Taichi line. Where the Phantom Gaming 9 differs is the PCB printing, which has streaks of gray and red on a black background. The chipset is a black and silver block with a red and black streak and stylized "PG" instead of the Taichi's cog and gear theme.

The back of the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 is a similar black, but not empty. ASRock has placed a few key controllers on the back of this board, most notably for the 2.5 Gb/s LAN. Although very attractive overall, the board is less neutral than the Taichi because of its red accents.


The CPU socket is open enough to accommodate most coolers, and the VRM heatsink looks quite capable.


There are three M.2 slots on the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9; the first two are above and below the first PCIe x16 slot, while the last sits just below the chipset, between the second and third PCIe x16 slots. This third slot has a nice full-coverage heatsink and represents one of the biggest changes to this board over its predecessors. Previous Taichi boards include similar heatsinks, but always in the topmost M.2 slot. By moving the heatsink to the bottom slot and offsetting that slot to the right, the installed M.2 drive should get better airflow in most situations because it has been moved away from the GPU. This is the same new configuration that I praised on the recent ASRock Z390 Taichi, and I'm glad it wasn't an exception.


The ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 offers three PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots, all encased in steel armor, as well as two PCI Express 3.0 x1 slots. The board has a total of eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports, and all are angled 90 degrees from the board. Six of these ports are powered by the Z390 chipset, while the last two are supported by an ASMedia ASM1061 controller.


The ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 has a good rear I/O offering made up of three LAN ports, a "Clear CMOS" button, and Optical S/PDIF Out port. The USB ports come in three slightly different colors, so I feel I should clarify a bit. The first four in a medium dark blue are USB 3.1 Gen1, while the two dark blue and very light blue (as well as the Type-C) ports are USB 3.1 Gen2.

• 1x "clear CMOS" button
• 2x Antenna ports
• 1x HDMI port
• 1x DisplayPort 1.2
• 1x PS/2 keyboard and mouse combo connector
• 4x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports
• 3x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A ports
• 1x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port
• 3x RJ-45 LAN ports
• 1x Optical SPDIF out port
• 5x 3.5 mm audio jacks

Networking on the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 is handled by a Giga PHY Intel I2119V and a GigaLAN Intel I211AT, while wireless is handled by an Intel 802.11ac Wi-Fi module.