Gadgetory

hey guys build Zoid here from actually hardcore overclocking and today we're gonna be doing a z 390 motherboards highlights list so basically motherboards I think are interesting for some reason or another that you should like consider them if you're building a 90 hunt and ninety nine hundred K or ninety seven hundred K based build now I'm not considering all features on these motherboards but there's just some features that you know I'm I'm targeting and so let's let's just get through this there's a bunch of different categories to try you know get some variety in the the boards because if we just went by my preferred sorting sorting system from other boards which is just VR I'm quality then this would be really really lopsided and what a favor of one brand before that this video is brought to you by the iBUYPOWER snowblind case available with same-day shipping under the ready program we've shown the snowblind case a few times over the years featuring its LCD side panel and ultra bright interior that allows for video playback on the panel this unique case is an IV power exclusive built on top of an ends exe base chassis and including a 1080 TI and 8700 K learn more at the link in the description below starting off in the ultra high-end category here I think the best option is going to be zz3 90 horas extreme because it's five hundred and fifty dollars whereas the competition of the Z 390 godlike and the Maximus 11 extreme are both $600 this has the best vrm out of all of them though admittedly the godlike has the same vrm it's just that the godlike doesn't include a GPU power this also has 10 gig LAN from a quanta which neither the godlike nor the extreme Lilla have and at that point it kinda and then on the other features they're pretty much a parody as far as I'm concerned the extreme might be maybe a little bit better at memory overclocking but I've also seen already like on the the the Facebook page of one of the engineers that get who works at gigabyte and who works on this motherboard like they've you know that they've already shown that the there's e3 90 lineup is perfectly capable of overclocking four sticks of RAM to very high frequencies if zooming you have a CPU that can keep up because four sticks of memory puts a ridiculous amount allowed on the CPUs memory controller and that's probably going to be a bigger issue for you frequency wise than the motherboard you end up choosing anyway so yeah basically because of that I think this is the the best of the sort of the ultra high-end partly because it's cheaper than their competition and also because it kind of combined like it has a it's and it's a bit better featured than than than the other boards though it is worth noting that the Maxima still have an extreme from Asus does have an edge in extreme overclocking it's just that it's $600 and for most people the fact that the motherboard run like has you know is a bit easier to run on lnto than the gigabyte board is completely irrelevant so that's why I didn't get into the get on to the list now then the next category I consider the 9900 K a borderline workstation CPU the main problem with the 9900 K in a workstation application is that you don't really have a lot of PCIe lanes to throw around and so we have the P Alex mother a P Alex chip motherboard category there's only two boards in this category because there's only two boards on Z 390 using P Alex chips but the P Alex chip is a basically a PCIe switch which will take the PCIe lanes from the CPU and reallocate them between more devices more efficiently so for example this motherboard right here you know Asus is advertising it as being capable of running four GPUs at 8 X 8 X 8 X 8 X but you can also just you can have two GPUs running SLI and then like a you know network card hooked up to the CPU or a capture card hooked up to the CPU and especially with SLI this is actually rather important because if you try to have a capture card and 2 NVIDIA GPUs at a like hooked up to a 9900 K at the same time without a PL x chip you would end up running 8 4 4 and SLI will not allow you to well will not enable if you have the GPU plug it into a X 4 PCIe slot so you know for that kind of scenario the P Alex chip is basically an absolute necessity so if you want a lot of PCIe connectivity you're pretty much stuck with you know choosing you can go for the wsz 390 Pro here and the other reason why it got onto the list is that this has the better VRM of the 2 plx chip equipped motherboards because the only cover it does come in at $400 so if you're not going to be overclocking which you probably won't like with which in a workstation of application you probably won't be then you might want to consider the Super Micro this thing ah c9z 390 PGW so this motherboard also has a plx chip you can see the heatsink for it right there in the middle however the downside to this motherboard compared to the Asus wsd 390 Pro is that like you lose a bit of erm capability so this asus board is on a four plus two phase vrm but it's a really really powerful for phase like it doesn't really like as far as for phase V RMS go it doesn't really get better than this for phase now this on the other hand is a six phase but it's less powerful per phase so overall this is going to be less like this is gonna run hotter and it's slightly less efficient if you're going to be overclocking in ninety nine hundred K however this board is you know 335 dollars so almost $70 cheaper than the Asus one and this also has 10 gig LAN so you know in a workstation you know build where you might actually want 10 gig connectivity this has a pretty major advantage over the Asus WS board because this just had dual gigabit Intel LAN so yeah that is definitely something worth considering basically if you don't care about your you know networking so much and you just want more vrm overclocking capability and a plx chip you want this board if you want a plx chip and better network connectivity you want this board and also you're gonna save some money when buying this thing so you know there there's also some benefits to the two like that's the other benefit to this motherboard so then moving out of the sort of plx chip equipped motherboards category into the motherboards with 10 gig line and we've had a couple of them at this point right so we've had the the Super Micro board here this also has the tech want ten giggling as well but when it comes to network connectivity and kind of can't beat the Z 390 Tai Chi ultimate as that's a lot of land so you have one Intel gigabit another Intel gigabit and then finally ten gig a quanti ax LAN so basically yeah you have way more network connectivity on this motherboard than on any of the other motherboards it comes in at $300 so it's even cheaper than the Super Micro board but it lacks the plx chip so you can't actually like you couldn't do like sli and a capture card attached to the cpu at the same time you couldn't have like a RAID controller and two GPUs attached to the CPU at the tag at the same time you know those kinds of things wouldn't work but if you just want to a whole bunch of network connectivity well here it's integrated directly into the motherboard so you wouldn't necessarily need a you might not need a network card at that point though probably if you're considering a network card then you're probably going for a lot maybe more than just you know three three ports total but yeah this is a really solid option this has actually out of all of the sort of workstation e motherboards ayuh this basically has the best PRM has rock has it advert there advertising it is a 12 power phase design which is accurate that's fine but what you need to consider is it's actually a 10 plus 2 phase so there's 12 phases total which is what they're going with here but you have 10 phases for v core and you have 2 phases for your eye GPU so things like quick sync from Intel will still work you can use the eye GPU for accelerating video encoding and all that and at the same time you get a 10 phase V core vrm now it is worth noting that out of all of these boards per phase this board has the weakest phases so this has stronger phases than the taichi except the Tai Chi has like four more phases and this has even stronger phases that like way stronger phases than what the Tai Chi has it's just that this is on four of them instead of 10 so the Tai Chi does actually end up being slight like on paper this vrm is slightly less efficient than what you get on the ws Pro from Asus but this does have a much more substantial VRM heatsink and so overall this ends up it will probably end up running cooler so that's also something worth worth considering and yeah that's kind of why this this motherboard made it onto the list it's a really good balance of like you have your you have a ton of networking you have a great a pretty good vrm it's not great but it's pretty good and you know it's full like you have your power reset you have your postcode you have everything else you could really want from a motherboard at this price point except I personally would prefer a stronger vrm in this situation now the next category ITX little boards there is really only one choice I can see here and that's this choice the Z 390 phantom gaming ITX / AC from asrock and the reasoning for this is simple with ITX you run into this funny issue where you can have disproportionate amounts of CPU cooling relative to the amount of erm space there is on the motherboard the fact of the matter is there's just not enough space to put a proper vrm on these things and as Rox done the best job of just cramming as much V RMS as they can so what you get is a five phase V curve erm with plus two phases 4i GPU you get a pretty substantial vrm heatsink with what looks to be a lot of surface area for the for the vcore vrm right there and the the cool thing is that as rocks actually like these these chips right here those aren't just any old power stages those are inter cells is l99 22 7 B's these are 60 amp smart power stages they're basically some of the best power stages used across like on Z 390 so and those are also used in the V curve erm so you basically get a combination of really really good components in the V curve erm and also one of the most substantial heat sinks I've seen on an ITX motherboard for vrm cooling on Z 390 and so for that reason I think this is gonna be the best choice for a you know ITX Z 390 motherboard it also helps that it comes in at only a hundred and ninety dollars so it's not even the most expensive ITX offering out there and you know build quality wise I think this is pretty much the clear winner so yeah as Rock has quite quite a win here with the the phantom gaming IT export now then em ATX this is the neglected form factor is probably the best way to put it you have basically two choices the way I see it you can get a rogue maja rog Maximus 11 Jean this board got onto the list because it has the best vrm out of all the many of all the em ATX motherboards this is a 5 plus 2 phase of erm so you have 5 phases V Core 2 phases I GPU there's 260 m power stages in each of the phases from international rectifier so those are ir35 55s asus is favorite power stage apparently they bought a truckload of them a long time ago and so they keep using them everywhere now but the issue the kind of the issue with this motherboard is that it's four hundred and twelve dollars and on Newegg right now and that's mainly because they don't actually like asus doesn't ship this board to the u.s. proper so currently what's going on as far as i'm aware is that Newegg is basically buying the motherboard from europe and importing it and that makes it really expensive but as far as the RM goes like the thing is perfect like these are ridiculous phases like per phase capability like peak current capability on each phase is something like 120 amps assuming you had enough cooling to actually deal with that much current going through each phase so this is the most efficient VRM on em ATX you could get it's also the most expensive motherboard it's kind of geared more for extreme overclocking than daily usage which is why it's like you know it's kind of a weird form factor cuz like they've axed it early you only have two memory slots and so a lot of people don't like because it kind of loses a bunch of typical m ATX features i mean you only have two PCIe slots instead of the like some other boards will go as far as having four just like barely crammed onto the board but still there where as this you know it has one PCIe slaw there's voltage read points down there you have a post code you have a whole bunch of ln2 overclocking controls right up there there's the dim dot two slot which we can actually see occupy yeah so that's the expansion weird Karp block looking thing right there that's the dim not to slaw that's where you actually install your extra m adult to SSDs the other one goes under that goes under this metal slab right here but yeah this is like is a very expensive you know am ATX motherboard but it's also the best m ATX motherboard coming because there's no competition on MIT X if you go really like there's only one other m ATX motherboard which I consider as having a good enough erm to run an overclock 9900 K and that's this thing which is the z3 90m gaming from gigabyte this thing is a hundred and forty five dollars this vrm is kind of borderline in terms of its ability to actually run a ninety nine hundred K but it's still a ten plus two phase it's not using power stages is using discrete MOSFETs from on semiconductor and yeah the like the the main concern I have with this motherboard is like the vrm is gonna run relatively hot but it's not gonna be you know unsafe levels of hot assuming you have some airflow going through the vrm area but the main concern I have with cheap gigabyte motherboards is that cheap gigabyte motherboards tend to suck at memory overclocking unfortunately the way things work in terms of CPU performance 500 megahertz memory clock is less of a difference than a hut like makes less of a difference than a hundred megahertz more CPU core clock which is why I'm choosing this over all of the other em ATX motherboards just because you could realistically lose a hundred megahertz by going with one of the other em ATX boards just because you won't be able to cool like a 5 5 or a 5.1 gigahertz overclock whereas with this you know the V arm should be just about able to handle it on the other hand yeah sure some of the other motherboards might be able to run the memory say at four 4,000 megahertz or forty two hundred megahertz or maybe even 4400 mAh forty 400 megahertz versus thirty 600 megahertz which this board will almost certainly do is not as much of you know on the memory isn't gonna be as a big a difference as the CPU doing five point one instead of five gigahertz right so for that reason on em ATX this is basically my my go-to cheap em ATX motherboard because the other ones just don't have the VR m2 to power a ninety nine hundred K now obviously if you're not going for a ninety nine hundred K and you're going for like a ninety seven hundred K or a ninety-six hundred K the VR I'm kind of erm situation kind of becomes irrelevant but the that point it's also like why are you pairing a 4000 megahertz plus very expensive memory kit with a 9600 or a 9700 K like what are you doing that doesn't make any sense buy a better CPU before you buy overpriced memory right like that kind of argument so yeah moving on from the M ATX form factor we get into the v RM per dollar category and this is the the Cata like I've kept this category last because basically with z3 90 gigabyte has decided that they're gonna have the best v RM at every price point that's not very hard to do when asus has decided that they don't like phases as rocket decided that you know what the the v RM they like that they're just gonna add two phases to their last year's design and it's fine but gigabyte basically decided what we're just gonna have the best v RM and the end result is that they kind of do I mean at the ultra high end it doesn't get better than this at the sort of $300 motherboard price point we have the Z 390 or s master board which as far as overclocking features go I think this is fully equipped you have a 12 phase IR you know V core v RM plus two phases 4i GPU power gigabyte also includes a single bios mode switch as well as a bio select switch so that you can bypass some of the silliness that gigabytes software dual BIOS implementation tends to get up to this is on gigabytes six layer PCB the memories in T topology which is really optimized for for memory stick overclocking but I have this motherboard I've tested the memory overclocking even with two sticks it's really rather solid I don't really had any issues with it so this is a really well balanced motherboard and it just has the best vrm at the $300 around the $300 price point as this thing comes in at 290 dollars so it's actually a bit below that and it really has kind of like overclocking feature wise it has basically everything the only thing I wouldn't necessarily recommend this motherboard for is ln2 overclocking because while this motherboard has all the necessary voltages they're applied after boot instead of at boot and that actually makes a huge difference because if you apply them after boot that means you can't boot the motherboard it like minus 150 you have to boot at minus 110 because just coffee lake is weird like that okay if you could actually set the voltages earlier directly at boot up then you could boot at much lower temperatures and something like the Maximus 11 Jean does that and a lot of the other like ROG boards do that the asrock a Tai Chi I think does not as well but if you're not doing extreme overclocking that feature is completely irrelevant in which case this has the best we are a meets Inc best vrm and BIOS wise like you know it has the dual BIOS kit functionality like there's a lot like I like this motherboard it's just that in extreme overclocking there's motherboards that kind of do that a bit better but that's kind of irrelevant to most people anyway so that's how that got onto this list now if we start lowering the price point a bit what about $250 well gigabytes got you covered with the vrm again hey it's another 12 phase and it's still using power stages so this time it's on vishay semiconductor 50 amp power stages these are a little bit like the International rectifier 40 amp power stages they're a bit less efficient at least on paper but they're a bit smarter than the power stage is used on this motherboard this still uses the same sixth our PCB so memory overclocking is going to be exactly the same as on the master and it still keeps all of the extreme overclocking voltages it drops the BIOS switches and you lose some of the sort of but like you lose some of the buttons on the motherboard but overall like this is very very close to the master in terms of features it's just like yeah you like personally the main complaint for me is that it loses the single BIOS mode to get rid of some of the issues the dual BIOS causes but yeah like as far as the vrm goes at 250 dollars it really doesn't get better than this and this still has a really substantial vrm cooling solution on it and then as we keep lowering the price point it just gets worse because that vrm that gigabyte uses on the ultra board well they're still using it on the elite board as well this is the same 12 phase V curve erm as you got on the old truck except this motherboard is the z3 90 or s elite this thing comes in at a hundred and eighty dollars at this price point most of the competition is running like four phases and well basically that means you know that this is the only motherboard at this price point like that this has just like it's not even fair at that point like this vrm is so much better than what everybody else is running that you know that's why this motherboard is on the list while everything else at this price point isn't this is just going to be the best at overclocking a ninety nine hundred K now what is worth noting is that from the ultra the difference here is that this is on a four layer PCB and I actually have a motherboard based on this same for our PCB I have the z3 90 or s pro from gigabyte and I gotta say that thing is not great at memory overclocking honestly like gigabyte has in their advertising for these motherboards claims that they do up to 40 to 66 megahertz and beyond in my experience it's more like 38 66 admittedly I'm testing with a memory kit that has an XMP profile of 37 33 but that memory kit that I'm using regularly hits over 4000 megahertz unlike all of my other motherboards except the z3 90 or s pro and one or two other gigabyte motherboards and so you know that's kind of kind of the situation there so you know but you do get a really solid vrm and at this price point you know it's like why are you buying a really expensive memory kit is gonna be my first question if you run into the memory support issues that this could have because like gigabyte has qvl daffy you 4,000 plus megahertz kits for this board it's just like I don't have those so I don't can't really verify how true those claims are I'm taking them with a grain of salt because I have a memory kit that regular really runs 4000 megahertz plus on everything else just not this PCB so yeah but VR my is there's no competition at this price point and with a ninety nine hundred K again your priority is maximum CPU core clock the memory is basically irrelevant yeah once you hit sort of thirty two hundred thirty six hundred megahertz which this board will still do all right that'll still work it's just that yeah so the RM first memory second is the the priorities I have now then going even cheaper we get into motherboards that can technically run a ninety nine hundred K but it's really borderline the Z three ninety UD the z three ninety gaming X and then gezi 390 gaming SLI from gigabyte all of these run the same ten plus two phase of erm that we saw on the XIII 90m gaming these go all the way from you know they're from one hundred and thirty two hundred and fifty dollars this vrm is borderline acceptable for the ninety nine hundred K and again you know memory makes less of a difference than CPU clock which is why I'm favoring this motherboard over all the other motherboards at this price point and actually a lot of the other motherboards at this price point are in my opinion just straight-up not like shouldn't even be allowed to change core voltage on a ninety nine hundred K past like one point two volts like you shouldn't be able to manually set the CPU to run more than one point two volts all eight cores at the same time because the V RMS on the competition at this price point are just bloody awful admittedly if you're on like a ninety seven hundred K or ninety-six hundred K that the RM stops being so important and you can look for like some balance of features that you might want or something but if you want to run a ninety nine hundred K on a cheap motherboard your main issue is going to be that the vrm is gonna overheat once you start overclocking and that's why this is sort of the motherboard that like that this is the bare minimum I would go for with a ninety nine hundred K and I wouldn't really consider this a good choice anyway this is like ill Ronnie especially if you get some VR airflow over the v RM but there are better motherboards out there and they're no you know we're only like admittedly okay it's not a small increase in price to go to the elite from the ultra-durable but this is also really like there's no features on this motherboard either right like it is really barren in terms of the i/o and just really everything in terms of USB connectivity and just like yeah there's barely anything on this motherboard so I really recommend like if you're gonna be running a ninety nine hundred K this would be like the bare minimum of what I would go for just because this like you get a huge upgrade in vrm quality like the jump from this board to this board or even the you know the Z 390 gaming X or like the z3 90m gaming like it's a big difference from this VRM to this v RM and for that reason like if you're gonna go for a 99 hundred K I'd start at this especially if you're in the ATX form factor if you're going for em ATX then yeah you kind of don't have a choice because there's like two motherboards that are good well this one's not good this one's borderline but this is the other option and this one's for hundred bucks so I would understand you know if you want an M ATX build you'd be stuck with this but in the ATX land this exists and this is just yeah so much better so yeah that is sort of the Z 390 motherboard highlights for me right ultimately I'm considering this very much as a case of you want to run the 99 hundred K not the 9700 K and because of that you know the and also I'm always considering it in terms of overclocking right if you're not going to overclock then the main concern is that the motherboard might not run the CPU at false like might throttle the seat like throttle the CPU at stock which is possible it's just like it's that that's a really hard judgment to make with overclocking it's pretty like that's really easy like that's well known in terms of what the capabilities of the motherboards are and in that situation you know it's just like gigabyte gigabyte going gigabyte unless you want some special feature like 10 gig line at Keit lowest possible price point or P Alex chips and or you know P Alex chips again and if you just want the best possible VR I'm well there's this thing that's kind of the whole z3 or you know you're looking at some form factor and that's kind of all of the the z3 ninety motherboards that I consider interesting the motherboards that didn't get on here are basically an issue of the vrm is not good enough and there's no feature like if the vrm is not good enough and there's no feature to compensate for the lack of erm capability I don't know why you would go for that motherboard right immediately I'm not considering things like audio sections just because you can't judge them without like testing and I don't even know how to how you would like how you would objectively test audio sections like that's something I have no idea about so just looking at things I can you know understand about motherboards like the vrm and the connect working connectivity plx chips that kind of thing and the basic features these are the motherboards I think really stand out from the rest it's just that yeah gigabyte decided they're gonna do you know they're really going to focus on their vrm quality and so they've kind of won the race in that department across the entire Z 390 lineup feature wise you know you you might find some better options as well so then that is it for the video thank you for watching like share subscribe leave any comments questions suggesting down in the comment section below and you'd like to support gamers Nexus there's store dog gamers Nexus dotnet 4 mod mats shirts and other kinds of merch that you can pick up and if you'd like to support us directly there is patreon I have another channel called actually hardcore overclocking where I do a whole bunch of overclocking focused content and it would be kind of cool if you would check that out and yeah that's it for the video thanks for watching and good bye