Gadgetory

don't worry that is not the motherboard today we're taking a look at the asrock phantom gaming XZ 390 motherboard now we're gonna get the negatives out of the way first there's two negatives I see with this motherboard first is the price it's very expensive 349 u.s. dollars in Australia it's going to be released sometime in September I believe and then I'll update the pricing in AUD in the description below for you guys in Aussie land but also another thing with Z 390 as we can probably tell is that this is a one-time purchase in that I don't really see an upgrade path for this motherboard past the 9900 K but with that said today we're gonna be testing this board on the 9900 K and I'm gonna be doing a special test to try and extract as much power through the vrm as possible with an FPU test in i-264 okay that didn't work so who managed to get the CPU draw up to 270 watts but it pretty much froze is the vrm handled it absolutely fine and now speaking of the vrm they are using ASL six nine one three eight also ISL six six one seven eight for the driver and also the doubler and on the chokes they're using SMD 60 amp solutions and then for the capacitors we've got 12 k nichkhun caps now the phases we're talking about a fourteen phase vrm here but technically it's a power stage since there you are using driver MOSFETs and these are the vishay si si six three fours so a pretty high-end solution though speaking of the temperature tests I had a ninety nine hundred K at five gigahertz at one point three six volt and yes I know my ninety nine hundred K NGO sample is not the best example but it's actually good for testing out V RMS and checking out the temperatures where we could see here a ninety degree of raw vrm MOSFET temp and then 63 degrees on the heatsink this isn't a 24 degree ambient environment so you won't needed active cooling solution on this vrm even if you're overclocking the 99 hundred K so the most important part of this motherboard that is the BRM checks out it's good to go but what about all the other features on this motherboard as I honestly need a bit of a warm-up in preparation for all the x5 70 motherboards to be released and with that said let the testing begin so with any motherboard test I always go deep into the armboard audio and here they're using the realtek ALC 12:20 and they've also got the option for the creative similar five overlay where you can configure things through software now you will want to install this driver to get the best results but speaking of the crosstalk so minus 90 decibels on both left and right channels and this is on a hundred volume level which is phenomenal and I keep saying this every few months the more higher-end motherboards come through these are the best numbers I've seen as we move over to the frequency response curve we can see here that 10 to 20 Hertz there's no drop-off at all in bass roll-off and then 0 to 10 Hertz we've got a -2 decibel roll-off so basically in terms of pairing this with mid-range cans and also even some high range cans this will do a phenomenal job of giving you crystal-clear audio since they are also using on the front headphone out a headphone amplifier named idli the NE 5 5 3 2 and they've also got niche akan caps and an isolated area for that onboard audio which does show in both the crosstalk and the frequency response numbers the rest of the audio throughout the whole range is pretty much completely flattened then having a smooth roll-off as you enter the end of the test which it maxes out at 20 kilohertz on this particular test and they've also got up to 32 bits 192 kilohertz of room there to wiggle on the headphone out and then for the mic in and also lining you've got support for up to 24 bit depth at 192 kilohertz now speaking of the mic input another test that I like to throw in for you guys it's exceptional I believe they're only using a slight amount of noise suppression as I couldn't really detect any so basically if you wanted to use this for professional recordings you could even use this onboard ear solution to do just that and get good results but now here honestly is where the asrock phantom gaming axe breaks away from all the other Azeroth boards in this lineup and that is the feature set first of all we've got 8 PWM fan headers which in the bar so you can use the fan tuning software to make custom profiles and tune every individual fan header itself or you can auto tune with the fan tuning software which will do its job for you based on the temperatures and then moving into the SSD they've also got three nvme slots all covered by that massive bottom heatsink when I did test with an SSD drive an octane 32gig solution a family were getting 43 degrees in the software and then 38 degrees with the IR camera the one thing I did get a little bit of interference here with the RGB LEDs and also when we had the heatsink off we're getting 58 degrees and 59 degrees respectively so this heatsink it's massive it's doing a good job for the aesthetics but it's also doing a good job of cooling down nvme SSD drives which all of these slots are x4 pcie 3.0 by the way now moving further into the BIOS itself this is their UEFI BIOS it's pretty much one of those things that works and if it works you don't need to fix it it's got all the options you need for me personally especially if you're an enthusiast water-air overclocker can change all the voltage timings I have noticed they have added the additional Samsung be die tight timings there if you want to get even tighter timings on your memory and better performance there's also the ability to update your BIOS fire and active internet connection and you can save up to five different overclocking profiles and lastly the RGB polychrome software or should I say hardware in this case because you don't need to install any software within Windows in order to change your RGB controls now the headers on this board you've got two 12-volt outs in a 5 volt addressable which you can then control and change with up to 13 different effects plus random and that's for also the two included areas with the heatsink down south and then the i/o shield up north you can change those individual lighting zones to now continue on with the feature set up this board you get Wi-Fi a X 8'o 2.11 a X and that's essentially known as Wi-Fi 6 I did manage to do a speed test hooked up to mine ass and it was capping out the right speeds at 1300 megabits per second and then the raid speeds were pretty much capping out at 3000 megabits per second so this Wi-Fi solution does work pretty well I'd love to test it at higher speeds but unfortunately I can't hear the studio and saying with the realtek 2.5 g solution I tested that out and that was maxing out the raid speeds over that landline over 3,000 megabytes per second and then we've got two additional NICs on board for 3 in total those other two being Intel solutions if you want to use them for instance for gaming if you don't try the real tech then you can use those two additional headers as well they're going over the back of this board you've also got your Wi-Fi antenna included in this package and six USB ports four of those being Gen 3.2 I know it's a little bit tedious with the naming scheme Gen 1 solutions are scoring up to 5,000 megabytes per second they're type-a connectors and then we've got an additional three Gen 2 solutions swearing up to 10 gigabits per second and also a type C which will give the same speeds now testing out those USB 3 speeds they did check out absolutely fine also on the rear of the board you've got that trusty clear CMOS button which I love to have implemented on any motherboard that has to do with overclocking and they've also got their integrated IO shield which they make a claim that as rocks the only brand that has a little bit of flexibility in it so you won't have to worry about whatever case you install this motherboard into you're gonna have east of fitting with that flexible IO shield now going over the last of the features with this motherboard got a debug LED power and reset buttons and also an overclocking header out as well as USB 3.2 gen one two USB front out headers for those two make four ports in total as well as a one type-c out Gen 2 so it's a little bit confusing with that naming scheme I know but this board is ultimately just feature packed I honestly couldn't think of one more thing that would need to do to add any more features into this motherboard it pretty much hits the nail on every head I can think of so with that said let's move over now to a conclusion so there it is with the phantom gaming ax and as we said in the intro it's three hundred and forty nine US dollars a big ask for a mainstream motherboard though it is what they call their flagship board in every single test I did here today on this motherboard definitely was worthy of calling it a flagship board now I am looking forward to what asrock is doing on the X 570 line but this is definitely some good practice form as we can see with that onboard audio solution they've got that perfect now the vrm solution especially a high-end solution like this was implemented with no problems whatsoever and then we move over to the rest of the feature set it is just jam-packed with up to eight different PWM fan headers on board and the BIOS checks out the stabilities there and also the heat sinks all do a good job of keeping this board control even with a bad sample like I've got over 9900 K that puts out a lot of heat now speaking of the heat sinks themselves the last thing to mention is they have got a heat sink that does come over the back of the board they say this gives more stability I just think it's more of an aesthetic thing and more of a premium feel which is a welcome addition but again that 349 u.s. dollar price tag if you guys are willing to get the best from asrock then this will definitely offer the best one thing that is missing I guess the only thing to critique is that on some of the boards at this price range as rock in the past have implemented a 10 gigabit per second Knick solution this one however is 2.5 gigabits max so that's the only thing I could think of though it is pretty expensive in their defense to implement these tanking a bit per second solutions and not everyone uses them dare I'd say not enough people use them for them to be a viable solution on every single flagship motherboard though speaking of the next best thing if you want to get on the 9900 K and you don't to spend this much on the motherboard I've also tested out the phantom gaming nine that can be had for 220 US dollars so you say basically a hundred and thirty USD and pretty much get the same performance in terms of overclocking and everything else but ultimately this is that board for someone who just wants everything from a motherboard from the get-go though with that aside even if you're in the market for one of these things I'd seriously wade around the corner and just check out what AMD's got with the x5 70 launch that's coming up very soon I'll be covering that here on the channel and if you guys enjoyed this review then be sure to hit that like button for us also let us know in the comments section below what do you think of as rocks new design with their phantom gaming series I'm actually thinking it's pretty clean that in the SteelSeries legend I think they're hitting the mark in 2019 quite well I'm really looking forward to giving you guys some coverage on X 570 as well and with that said if you want to see that the moment it drops be sure to hit that subscribe button ring the bell and I'll catch you guys in another tech video very soon peace out for now bye you