ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 Review

Name: ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9
Brand: ASRock

Nate

on Dec 3rd, 2018,

in Motherboards.

Manufacturer: ASRock

Audio Quality »

Finished Looks

The ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 is a great-looking board that has its roots in the Taichi line, but has brought a certain amount of flare into the mix. The fit and finish is excellent, and the board looks great with my test components. Moving the M.2 heatsink to the bottom slot is a stroke of genius as it is no longer in the shadow of the GPU.

The RGB implementation is quite good as well. With the shroud over the rear I/O, shield over the audio cluster, and chipset heatsink, there are three distinct RGB clusters. None of the zones are obvious or intrusive while turned off, which is a plus for some. The ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 also includes two RGB LED headers.

Test System

Test System
Processor:	Intel Core i9-9900K 5.0 GHz (Max Boost Clock), 16 MB Cache
Memory:	2x 8 GB DDR4 3866 MHz G.SKILL TridentZ F4-3866C18D-16GTZ
Cooling:	Alphacool Eisbaer 240
BIOS Version:	Z39PG1.22
Graphics Card:	MSI GTX 980 GAMING 4 GB
Harddisk:	1x Crucial M4 128 GB SATA 6 Gb/s SSD (OS) 1x Crucial BX200 256 GB SATA 6 Gb/s SSD (Data) 1x Samsung 950 PRO M.2 (NVMe)
Power Supply:	Seasonic Prime Titanium 1000 W
Case:	Lian Li T60 test bench
Software:	Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, NVIDIA GeForce 376.33 WHQL