ASUS 90MB0YG0-M0EAY0 Strix Intel Z390-F Gaming Motherboard review

ASUS 90MB0YG0-M0EAY0 Strix Intel Z390-F Gaming Motherboard review

ASUS 90MB0YG0-M0EAY0 Strix Intel Z390-F Gaming Motherboard review

the Seuss's ed 390 Strix II is their other interesting kind of gaming motherboard as they brand and actually fairly highly priced for being part of their strikes lane of if you're new to the Asus kind of motherboard lineup generally speaking there are G specific branded board or Republic of gamers are their highest and most feature packed boards and then they have their Strix lineup which is they slightly cut down but generally still pretty great lineup of motherboards

with generally a little lower price tag skill with it to give you a quick rundown of the board we obviously have support for in South ninth and 8th gen CPUs including the 9900 K which is a bit of a power hog low we'll talk about that in a second you obviously still have the same 1151 socket in the center for ddr4 random slaws and actually 2 m dot 2 slots both of which are heat

sinks one of them is just below the chipset and is a hundred and ten millimeter slot whereas the top one is the more standard 80 millimeter slot that the majority of your own up to SSDs would fit in just fine next thing I'll go to starts we have two x16 sized slots the top one is full x16 electrically and go straight to the CPU the middle one goes to the CPU as well otherwise x8

electrically and if you're running them together so if you're running two graphics cards in them for example and they'll be running in x8 and x8 each and then the bottom slot is while it's x16 in size it's not a reinforced slot and it's only x4 electrically and goes through the chips there along with basically everything else on the board including both of the m2 slot that does mean

that both the m2 starts our bandwidth constricted so bear that in mind if you're planning on picking up any is at 390 board if you're using multiple m dot 2 slots and anything else then some of the PCIe slots will turn off for example because they're through PCIe switches and otherwise the rest of them will be fairly bandwidth limited if you're hitting your end up tubes

pretty hard I put the top left hand corner of the board you have a single 8 pin power connector which is just fine even for a 900 K and then you have a bracket that is essentially meant to be used for the included I guess 80-odd mill fan to give better airflow over the VRMs we'll talk more about the Veyrons in a second but suffice to say it's a pretty impressive configuration in

terms of the rest of the stuff that's on the board you have a USB type-c front panel header a thunderbolt connector down the bottom and two standard RGB connectors as well as one addressable RGB connector just below the SATA ports you have six SATA ports yoseob's so you use your USB 2 and USB 3 pump and hammers down the bottom you also have the supreme effects audio setup which is actually pretty nice as well where they filled 7.1 audio with

s/pdif on the back and what we're talking about the back you also have a couple of display outputs you have Gigabit Ethernet you have CM VI Wi-Fi built-in which is nice to see you also have USB to USB 3 USB type-c and a ps2 most combo port as well if you need one now as I said this port supports Intel's in length Gen 19 900k but can it handle it whilst I said the V RMS up is pretty great so the overall answer is yes I don't have any information from Asus here so I'm just going off what's on the board and research and the components but basically the controller

you they're using is a digi+ vrm ASP 1400 CTB which is as far as I'm aware a rebranded ir35 201 or 35 2 or 3 either way that means that it's an 8 a channel can set up with the PWM to the MOSFETs and those MOSFETs there's a total of 10 of them in what looks to be an 8 + 2 although I believe that's a double date + 2 so I believe it's something along the lines of 4 plus 2 actual but then a 8 + 2 kind of final result but either way that is the setup the the MOSFETs that using our mCP 3 o 2 O 4 5 which are high and low side MOSFETs together and those can

do 45 amps each which means that this is a pretty impressive setup there what does all of that mean for real-world testing with a 19 900k I saw basically no increase in temperature on the V RMS even when hitting the neuralgic a full load at full stock boost and of course that you can obviously overclock pretty well on the board and in terms of temperatures I think the maximum the vrm set was about 50 degrees Celsius which is nothing 4 V RMS and that's

without the fan installs so if you really wanted to push in an 800 K you could do and I think you do pretty well with that speaking of overclocking this bore actually has a pretty interesting feature that none of the they're kind of competitors on the market have and that is a Seuss's new AI overclocking feature this is something that appears on the side the sidebar if you like where you normally see you know your CPU frequency and temperature and memory

frequency and stuff but you know have a little prediction window so there's a couple of things I want to explain here first of all the SI L is effectively your silicon quality so it's estimating how good of an overclocker your chip will be the higher the percentage the better the overclock are the chip is supposedly that's not necessarily a kind of guarantee that if you have a 95 or 100% kind of SI L chip then you're gonna get you know a million gamers it just means that your chip

is more likely to be happier to overclock you also have a cooler point score that is essentially just how well your cooler can do at cooling your CPU and that is something that the the system or the nother board learns from as you load up the CPU no set of stuff so in theory putting a bear a cooler gets you a better score means the system will be able to auto overclock your cpu even more now you do have to go in and manually set it to auto overclock your cpu if you want

that you put AI optimized in the overclocking settings and then it will do it all for you but it's actually a pretty good and pretty stable overall setup which is actually quite nice to see the rest of the BIOS is fairly standard it's the usual sort of menu system interface and it really isn't much change to your besides that ai overclocking feature so supposed to say it's not as user friendly as MSI's but it's a little bit easier to get to things like overclocking and then or you

know people that get your vice but it's so a decent user experience although not the most friendly thing in the world so the roundup here is that this is an expensive motherboard it's selling at the time of filming in the UK which makes it a well pretty expensive board the gigabyte is at 390 master board which is one of their highest and fact I think it is their highest and Zed 390 board is only more and that does have a good

number more features and well the vrm setup isn't necessarily you know worse on this that one is slightly better so if you're going for some extreme overclocking that one does have a few extra fee a few kind of details that might be a little bit better for you but um overall it's it's definitely expensive especially if you're being a Strix Board but it does have a few features to back that up with the IAI overclocking and mostly a great vrm setup and some nice overall connectivity too

you still do have the problems of as I said that bandwidth limitation when it comes to say your render to slots and stuff like that as not only do your MDOT twos and you know your lower PCIe slots but also all of your iOS all of the Wi-Fi all of your Gigabit Ethernet your USB ports to your thunderballs all of that goes through the chipset as well which means that you're gonna be limiting your MDOT who's basically whatever you do if you're using multiple or even just

one high-end one in here so do you bear that in mind but otherwise if you're looking for a Zedd 390 board and especially if you do want to stick on the su side of things then this is a really nice option if a big expense would I put this on my desk and probably it's a nice board it's a little bit lacking in i/o in terms of USB ports that tend to use a fair number of them but overall I'm pretty happy with it I'd be fairly happy to recommend it if you're looking for a Xan 390 board

and yeah it's just generally pretty good so with that said I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments down below is this a board you're interested in are you interested in the serenade master more because it's not that much more expensive or is you know you just no interested in side through 90 in general you're sticking with your new rising CPU for example I mean one that comes down below if you want to buy one of these boards or to check your pricing when

and where you wash this then take a look at the link in the description down below where you can check that out you can also check out the rest of the links down there too.

The STRIX series is usually ASUS version of a more fun, enthusiastic, better-looking motherboard, yet on a budget. And two weeks ago I had reviewed the prime Z 390-A, it's entry-level. And we saw a lot of cool improvement but but but with the Republic of Gamers STRIX Z390-E, we have even more for our money. So without any further ado, let's take a closer look to this better-looking motherboard. (Sigh) INTRO PLAYING Alright, so this is not my first

STRIX and I absolutely love reviewing them because this is opportunity for Asus to, as I said earlier, trying to balance really cool gaming features and budget and there's also a few things that are not on the entry level such as thunderbolt and stuff like that but we have on the other hand more focused aesthetical and gaming friendly features so starting with the obvious we

have here an ATX motherboard which is thirty point five centimeter long for twenty four point four centimeter wide. As usual it is powered by an LGA 1151 socket which will support both the 8th generation of iCore Intel processor as well as its 9th generation. I usually do not mention the VRMs but in this case because the ninth generation of Intel processors needs a considerable more amount of energy than its previous generation, we have more beefy VRMs

and that of course means more heat and potentially overheating and that is why Asus as provided, in the package with this motherboard, a little fan and fan bracket which will move air-flow little bit faster and try to keep this overheating at bay. Memory wise we have the usual dual channel configuration which can support up to 64 gigabyte of ddr4 Ram overclockable up to 4.266 megahertz, which by the way is 266 megahertz more than its previous generation: the Z370 powered motherboard. So kudos to Asus for that. But note as well that there are rumors

in market that the Z390 chipset can support up to 128 gigabyte of ddr4 Ram with 32 gigabyte sticks so let's see what's gonna happen in the next weeks and months but that might be a BIOS update which will allow this motherboard to support up to 128 gigabytes of ddr4 ram in dual channel. Let's see. Staying in the memory this board can support up to 2 m.2 solid-state drive. One 11 cm long and 1, 8 centimeter long. So here I want to take a second to mention the fact

that now the M.2 Solid State drive's heat shield and the chipset each shield, are two separated component which is an improvement compared to the previous generations of motherboards such as Z370, Z270, Z170 etc and that seems like a small detail but it has its importance. In the past, heat coming from the M.2 Solid State drive would be easily conducted toward the chipset and thermo-throttling would be an overall issue or an overall design issue on the motherboard.

So yes, it looks like a small change but it has its importance. As for the previous two generation of chipset the Z390 is Optane ready, meaning that our M.2 Solid State drives can both swap up to 32 gigabit per second. And as I mentioned before that also means serious heating and possible thermal throttling, and that is why both of our M.2 Solid State drives heat-shields are equipped with thermo-pads. So moving upward, we have six third-generation PCIe expresses.

Three single BUS speed, single slot, and three 16 slots with different speeds. As usual only the closest 16 slot to the CPU can provide up to 16 full BUS speed so if you have only one GPU to operate this is where you want it to be for optimal performances. If you are going for a two way GPU configuration, the two first 16 slot PCI Express will be sharing their bandwidth and we will have a 8x8 BUS configuration. And in the case you are going to use those three 16 slots

there will be all sharing the same bus speed and we will have an 8 by 4 by 4 configuration. And because those 16 PCI slots are most likely to carry the heavy weight of our video cards, they have been metallically reinforced as well. SATA wise we have our usual six SATA 3.0 plugs which can all transfer up to six gigabit per second. I/O wise, I want to note that the i/o shield is integrated onto the motherboard and that's again something I love seeing. Asus started to do this with their Z270 Maximus series a couple years ago and, as I used to say back then and I

keep saying right now, something I want to see more often. It's a real improvement. Saves you time, makes it more airtight. It's just an overall win-win so kudos to Asus to start with this. We have a mouse keyboard ps/2 connector, two second generation USB plugs which can transfer data up to 480 megabits per second, four 3.1 second generation USB intake, three of them type A and 1 type C, which can all transfer that up to 10 gigabit per second, and that is one of the

very few improvement we can notice coming from the Z370 to the Z390 chipset. We have more 3.1 second generation USB nested into the chipset which allows us to have more than, you know, the usual 2 second generation 3.1. We can actually have up to 6 of them in this motherboard and that is something which is quite a lifesaver for like video editing people like me, or even big gamers who have to swap data from a hard disk to an hard disk or USB or

whatever. So kudos to Intel / ASUS for this one. We have - 3.1 first-generation USB plugs which can transfer data up to five gigabit per second, our usual Display and HDMI output, our Intel wireless AC 9560 which can transfer data up to 1.3 gigabit per second and again this is the second main improvement that you will see coming from the Z370 chipset to the Z390 chipset.

We have a wireless adapter nested in there, which will allow multiple manufacturers to, more easily and more affordably, add Wi-Fi adapter without adding their dedicated third-party when a wireless chip set in there so again kudos. So not many improvement chipset wise but definitely good ones. Our surge protected Gigabit LAN and finally our usual five channel plus optical output. Alright, so time to take a closer look to our onboard connectors. So we have two second-generation front panel USB connectors right here which can both transfer that up to

480 megabits per second. One 3.1 first-generation front panel USB connector right here which can transfer data up to five gigabit per second and a 3.1 second generation front panel type-c connector which can transfer that up to ten gigabit per second. Again a consequence of our chipset upgrade. So far, pretty good. It looks like a very nicely done design and complete motherboard, but of course, as you know my favorite part of the review is the enthusiastic slash aesthetic part of it. And Asus, as usual, tend to pay more attention to their STRIX series when

it comes to looks and gaming aspect so in our case we have seven fan connectors. two of which are also water pump connectors, so if you are looking for a single or dual custom water cooling system these little motherboards, will have everything you need to make it happen. It also have one external thermal connector sensor for accurate thermal monitoring. Now aesthetically wise I am in love. It has the very same PCB board that the Prime series is using right so the one I reviewed two weeks ago the same components mainly but I have to say the design printed on

the board and the overall look and feel of it is absolutely gorgeous I mean that is a question of taste and I absolutely love it one thing we need to note here is that this board is all right compliant if you do not know the aura synced lighting effect then you should watch the review I've done about that a couple years ago and in a nutshell the aura sink effect will you know sync all the RGB of your different aura compliant opponents in your build so that they can all do

like cool synchronous effect together and on this particular board we have a very nice AURA/OLED strip hidden and there's our roof and it looks absolutely gorgeous and what Asus tries to do usually is to add more than one strip maybe two or even three integrating into the board but I'm kind of happy that they just went for one good quality good looking or a strip where it should be now if that is not enough we also have two more or a complaint an RGB

connector here and here and unlike the entry-level we have an addressable or rack compliant RGB connector right there and you know that is something I complained about two weeks ago and I was reviewing the Arime Z390 or the absence of an addressable RGB connector so very happy and kudos to Asus for putting it on they're more enthusiastic friendly gamer board all

right so this is conclusion time and the ROG STRIX Z390-E which is not cheap but I'll also say that Asus has definitely shown a more detailed approach and a more focused attention unto the performance of this board and that start with vrm hitting which are definitely bigger and higher than the one available on the PRIME Z390-A. It also shows when you have a second M.2 solid-state drive heat-sync which a thermal pad on the other side and for the first one it has

been separated from the chip set hit sync and finally we have this included fan and fan bracket to be installed on our VRM if needed so a real worry coming from Asus to keep this board as cool and performant as possible even if you are going to push it to its extreme limits on top of it all of course you have a premium build a premium motherboard which looks amazingly good the aura sync effect has not looked as good on this board at this price point of that is my

personal opinion we have everything you need to put you know addressable or classical or export on it as well and I have nothing bad to say about it but that's always about the Z390 chipset which powers this motherboard is so identical give or take a couple of details it's so identical to its predecessor the Z370 chipset that I don't see how you'd warrant an upgrade and dropping another this report both the same processors I mean one can argue that

because of the vrm if you use a ninth generation ichor Intel processor on the Z370 chipset you lose some 10-15 percent performances but even in this case I still don't see you know why you'd have to do that expenditure so as far as I go even though this is an amazing product an amazing motherboard if you have a Z370 chipset I wouldn't upgrade it but if you don't if you have

something previous to Z370 chipset to go for it this is the best bang for your buck the best motherboard which can range anything from casual gaming to extreme workstation load and something who can last you a long long time you know the best performance driven design I have seen in a long long time as well if ever at all all right that's my advisee today all right

ASUS 90MB0YG0-M0EAY0 Strix Intel Z390-F Gaming Motherboard review

Specifications

CPU
Intel® Socket 1151 9th / 8th Gen Intel® Core™, Pentium® Gold and Celeron® Processors
Supports Intel® 14 nm CPU
Supports Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0
* The Intel® Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 support depends on the CPU types.
* Refer to www.asus.com for CPU support list
Chipset
Intel® Z390
Memory
4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR4 4266(O.C.)/4133(O.C.)/4000(O.C.)/3866(O.C.)/3733(O.C.)/3600(O.C.)/3466(O.C.)/3400(O.C.)/3333(O.C.)/3300(O.C.)/3200(O.C.)/3000(O.C.)/2800(O.C.)/2666/2400/2133 MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory
Dual Channel Memory Architecture
Supports Intel® Extreme Memory Profile (XMP)
* Hyper DIMM support is subject to the physical characteristics of individual CPUs.
* Refer to www.asus.com for the Memory QVL (Qualified Vendors Lists).
Graphic
Integrated Graphics Processor- Intel® HD Graphics support
Multi-VGA output support : HDMI/DisplayPort ports
- Supports HDMI with max. resolution 4096 x 2160 @ 30 Hz
- Supports DisplayPort with max. resolution 4096 x 2304 @ 60 Hz
Supports Intel® InTru™ 3D, Quick Sync Video, Clear Video HD Technology, Insider™
Multi-GPU Support
Supports NVIDIA® 2-Way SLI™ Technology
Supports AMD 3-Way CrossFireX™ Technology
Expansion Slots
2 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8)
1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (max at x4 mode)
3 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x1
Storage
Intel® Z390 Chipset :
1 x M.2 Socket 3, with M key, type 2242/2260/2280 storage devices support (both SATA & PCIE mode)*1
1 x M.2 Socket 3, with M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (PCIE 3.0 x 4 mode)
6 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s)
Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10
Intel® Optane™ Memory Ready
LAN
Intel® I219V
Anti-surge LANGuard
ROG GameFirst Technology
Audio
ROG SupremeFX 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC S1220A
- Dual OP Amplifiers
- Impedance sense for front and rear headphone outputs
- Supports : Jack-detection, Multi-streaming, Front Panel Jack-retasking
- High quality 120 dB SNR stereo playback output and 113 dB SNR recording input
- SupremeFX Shielding Technology
- Supports up to 32-Bit/192kHz playback *2
Audio Feature :
- SupremeFX Shielding™ Technology
- Optical S/PDIF out port(s) at back panel
- Dedicated audio PCB layers: Separate layers for left and right channels to guard the quality of the sensitive audio signals
- Premium Japanese-made audio capacitors: Provide warm, natural and immersive sound with exceptional clarity and fidelity
- Sonic Radar III
- Sonic Studio III + Sonic Studio Link
USB Ports
Intel® Z390 Chipset :
1 x USB3.1 Gen 1 front panel connector port(s)
Intel® Z390 Chipset :
4 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 port(s) (3 x Type-A+1 x USB Type-CTM)
Intel® Z390 Chipset :
4 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 port(s) (2 at back panel, blue, 2 at mid-board)
Intel® Z390 Chipset :
6 x USB 2.0 port(s) (2 at back panel, black, 4 at mid-board)
ROG Exclusive Features
ROG Exclusive Software
- RAMCache III
- CPU-Z
- GameFirst V
- Sonic Studio III + Sonic Studio Link
- Sonic Radar III
Special Features
OC Design - ASUS PRO Clock Technology
- Full BCLK range for extreme overclocking performance
5-Way Optimization by Dual Intelligent Processors 5
- 5-Way Optimization tuning key perfectly consolidates TPU Insight, EPU Guidance, DIGI+ VRM, Fan Expert 4, and Turbo App
AI Overclocking
ASUS Optimem II：
- Optimem (Improved DDR4 stability)
- Improved DDR4 Stability
AURA :
- Aura Lighting Control
- Aura RGB Strip Headers
- Aura Lighting Effects Synchronization with compatible ASUS ROG devices
- Aura Addressable Strip Header(s)
ASUS Exclusive Features :
- MemOK! II
- AI Suite 3
- Ai Charger
- Armoury Crate
- Pre-mounted I/O Shield
- ASUS NODE: hardware control interface
ASUS EZ DIY :
- ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3
- ASUS EZ Flash 3
ASUS Q-Design :
- ASUS Q-LED (CPU, DRAM, VGA, Boot Device LED)
- ASUS Q-Slot
- ASUS Q-DIMM
Gaming Aesthetics :
- 3D printing friendly
- AURA-RGB Lighting
Digi+VRM
M.2 Onboard(The latest transfer technologies with up to 32Gb/s data transfer speeds)
DIY Friendly Design
- Procool
- SafeSlot
- Digi+ VRM
- DRAM Overcurrent Protection
- Highly Durable components
- ESD Guards
Back I/O Ports
1 x DisplayPort
1 x HDMI
1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
4 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (3 x Type-A+1 x USB Type-CTM)
2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1
2 x USB 2.0
1 x Optical S/PDIF out
5 x Audio jack(s)
Internal I/O Ports
1 x Aura Addressable Strip Header(s)
1 x AAFP connector
2 x Aura RGB Strip Header(s)
1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 front panel TypeC™ connector
1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1(up to 5Gbps) connector(s) support(s) additional 2 USB 3.1 Gen 1 port(s)
2 x USB 2.0 connector(s) support(s) additional 4 USB 2.0 port(s)
1 x M.2 Socket 3 with M key, type 2242/2260/2280 storage devices support (SATA & PCIE 3.0 x 4 mode)
1 x M.2 Socket 3 with M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (PCIE 3.0 x 4 mode)
6 x SATA 6Gb/s connector(s)
1 x M.2_FAN connector
1 x CPU Fan connector(s)
1 x CPU OPT Fan connector(s)
2 x Chassis Fan connector(s)
1 x W_PUMP+ connector
1 x 24-pin EATX Power connector(s)
1 x 8-pin ATX 12V Power connector(s)
1 x System panel(s) (Chassis intrusion header is inbuilt)
1 x MemOK! II switch(es)
1 x Thermal sensor connector(s)
1 x CPU OV
1 x Clear CMOS jumper(s)
1 x Node Connector(s)
1 x 5-pin EXT_FAN(Extension Fan) connector
1 x 14-1 pin TPM connector
1 x COM port header
1 x AIO PUMP Header
Accessories
User's manual
4 x SATA 6Gb/s cable(s)
1 x M.2 Screw Package
1 x Supporting DVD
1 x MOS fan bracket kit
1 x CABLE TIE BLACK
1 x SLI HB BRIDGE(2-WAY-M)
1 x ROG Strix stickers
1 x ROG Door Hanger(s)
1 x Extension Cable for RGB strips (80 cm)
1 x Extension cable for Addressable LED
1 x Thermistor cable(s)
BIOS
1 x 128 Mb Flash ROM, UEFI AMI BIOS, PnP, DMI3.0, SM BIOS 3.1, ACPI 6.1
Manageability
WOL , PXE
Operating System
Windows® 10 64-bit
Form Factor
ATX Form Factor
12 inch x 9.6 inch ( 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm )