ASUS Prime Z390-A Motherboard LGA1151 (Intel 8th and 9th Gen) review

ASUS Prime Z390-A Motherboard LGA1151 (Intel 8th and 9th Gen) review

ASUS Prime Z390-A Motherboard LGA1151 (Intel 8th and 9th Gen) review

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE ASUS PRIME Z390-A

ModelBrandASUSModelPrime Z390-A
Supported CPUCPU Socket TypeLGA 1151 (300 Series)CPU TypeIntel Socket 1151 for 9th/8th Generation Intel Core / Pentium / Celeron Processors
* Not backward compatible with older generation of LGA 1151 CPUs
** Refer to www.asus.com for Intel CPU support listSupported CPU TechnologiesSupports Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0*
* The Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0 support depends on the CPU types.
ChipsetsChipsetIntel Z390
Onboard VideoOnboard Video ChipsetIntegrated 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 1.2 with max. resolution 4096 x 2304 @ 60 Hz
Maximum shared memory of 1024MB (for iGPU exclusively)
Supports Intel InTru 3D, Quick Sync Video, Clear Video HD Technology, Insider
MemoryNumber of Memory Slots4×288pinMemory StandardDDR4 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
* The maximum memory frequency supported varies by processor
** Refer to www.asus.com for the Memory QVL (Qualified Vendors List)Maximum Memory Supported64GBChannel SupportedDual Channel
Expansion SlotsPCI Express 3.0 x162 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16, x8/x8, x8/x4+x4*, x8+x4+x4/x0**) ***
1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (max at x4 mode) ****
* For 2 SSD on CPU support, install a Hyper M.2 X16 card (sold separately) into the PCIeX16_2 slot, enable this card under BIOS settings.
** For 3 SSD on CPU support, install a Hyper M.2 X16 card (sold separately) into the PCIeX16_1 slot, enable this card under BIOS settings.
*** PCIEX16_1 slot supports up to 3 Intel PCIe NVME SSDs via a Hyper M.2 X16 series Card. *****
**** The PCIe x16_3 slot shares bandwidth with SATA_5 and SATA_6. The PCIe x16_3 is default set at x2 mode.
***** Hyper M.2 X16 series card sold separately. Install a Hyper M.2 X16 series card and enable this card under BIOS settings.PCI Express x13 x PCI Express 3.0/2.0 x1 slots
Storage DevicesSATA 6Gb/s6 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), grayM.21 x M.2 Socket 3, with M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 storage devices support (PCIE 3.0 x4 mode)
1 x M.2 Socket 3, with M key, type 2242/2260/2280 storage devices support (SATA & PCIE 3.0 x4 mode)*
* The M.2_1 socket shares bandwidth with SATA_2 port when using M.2 SATA devices. Adjust BIOS settings to use a SATA device.Intel Optane ReadyYesSATA RAID0/1/5/10
Onboard AudioAudio ChipsetRealtek ALC S1220A High Definition Audio CODEC featuring Crystal Sound 3Audio Channels8 Channels
Onboard LANLAN ChipsetIntel I219-VMax LAN Speed10/100/1000Mbps
Rear Panel PortsBack I/O Ports1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse combo port(s)
1 x DisplayPort
1 x HDMI
1 x LAN (RJ45) port(s)
3 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (teal blue) Type-A
1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C
2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (blue) Type-A
2 x USB 2.0
1 x Optical S/PDIF out
5 x Audio jack(s)
Internal I/O ConnectorsOnboard USB1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 front panel Type-C connector
1 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (up to 5Gbps) connector(s) support(s) additional 2 USB 3.1 Gen 1 port(s)
3 x USB 2.0 connector(s) support(s) additional 6 USB 2.0 port(s)Other Connectors2 x Aura RGB Strip Headers
1 x TPM header
1 x COM port(s) connector(s)
1 x CPU Fan connector(s) (1 x 4-pin)
1 x CPU OPT Fan connector(s) (1 x 4-pin)
2 x Chassis Fan connector(s) (2 x 4-pin)
1 x AIO_PUMP connector (1 x 4-pin)
1 x W_PUMP+ connector
1 x Thunderbolt header (5-pin) for ASUS ThunderboltEX series support
1 x Front panel audio connector(s) (AAFP)
1 x System panel(s) (Q-Connector)
1 x MemOK! II switch(es)
1 x CPU OV
1 x Power-on button(s)
1 x Clear CMOS jumper(s)
1 x Node Connector(s)
1 x EXT_Fan header
1 x Thermal sensor connector
1 x M.2 Fan Header
Physical SpecForm FactorATXLED LightingRGBDimensions (W x L)12.0" x 9.6"Power Pin1 x 24-pin EATX Power connector(s)
1 x 8-pin ATX 12V Power connector(s)
FeaturesFeaturesMulti-GPU Support:
Supports NVIDIA 2-Way SLI Technology
Supports AMD 3-Way CrossFireX Technology

Special Features:
5-Way Optimization by Dual Intelligent Processors 5
- 5-Way Optimization tuning key perfectly consolidates TPU, EPU, DIGI+ VRM, Fan Xpert 4, and Turbo Core App
- Procool Power connector design
TPU
- Auto Tuning, TPU, GPU Boost
Fan Xpert4
- Fan Xpert 4 featuring Fan Auto Tuning function and multiple thermistors selection for optimized system cooling control
ASUS 5X Protection III:
- ASUS SafeSlot Core: Fortified PCIe Slot prevents damage
- ASUS LANGuard: Protects against LAN surges, lightning strikes and static-electricity discharges!
- ASUS Overvoltage Protection: World-class circuit-protecting power design
- ASUS Stainless-Steel Back I/O: 3X corrosion-resistance for greater durability!
ASUS Optimem II:
- Improved DDR4 Stability
ASUS EPU:
- EPU
ASUS Exclusive Features:
- MemOK! II
- AI Suite 3
- Ai Charger
ASUS Quiet Thermal Solution:
- Stylish Fanless Design Heat-sink solution & MOS Heatsink
- ASUS Fan Xpert 4
ASUS EZ DIY:
- ASUS O.C. Tuner
- ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3
- ASUS EZ Flash 3
- ASUS UEFI BIOS EZ Mode
ASUS Q-Design:
- ASUS Q-Shield
- ASUS Q-LED (CPU, DRAM, VGA, Boot Device LED)
- ASUS Q-Slot
- ASUS Q-DIMM
- ASUS Q-Connector
AURA: RGB Lighting Control
Turbo APP
- featuring system performance tuning for selected applications
M.2 Onboard (The latest transfer technologies with up to 32Gb/s data transfer speeds)

BIOS:
128MB Flash ROM, UEFI AMI BIOS, PnP, SM BIOS 3.1, ACPI 6.1, Multi-language BIOS, ASUS EZ Flash 3, CrashFree BIOS 3, F11 AI OC Guide, F6 Qfan Control, F3 My Favorites, Last Modified log, F9 Search, F12 PrintScreen, and ASUS DRAM SPD (Serial Presence Detect) memory information

Manageability:
WfM 2.0, DMI 3.0, WOL by PME, PXE

Support Disc:
Drivers
ASUS Utilities
ASUS EZ Update
Anti-virus software (OEM version)

Operating System:
Windows 10 64-bit
PackagingPackage ContentsAccessories:
User's manual
ASUS Q-Shield
3 x SATA 6Gb/s cable(s)
1 x M.2 Screw Package
1 x SLI HB BRIDGE (2-WAY-M)
1 x Q-Connector
1 x SCD
1 x CPU Fan Holder.


SpecificationsPRIME Z390-A
CPU Support Intel Socket 1151 for 8th Gen and 9th Gen Core Processors Only
Chipset Intel Z390
Memory 4 x DIMM, Max. 64GB, DDR4, 2133 to 4266(OC) MHz Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory
Graphics Intel HD Graphics support
Multi-VGA output support DisplayPort 1.2 / HDMI 1.4
Display Port Resolution 4096 x 2304 @ 60 Hz
HDMI Resolution 4096 x 2160 @ 30 Hz
Multi-GPU Support 2-way NVIDIA SLI and 3-way AMD CrossFireX
Expansion Slots 2x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8), 1x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (max at x4 mode), 3x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x1
First M.2 Socket M.2 Socket 3, with M key, type 2242/2260/2280 storage devices support (SATA & PCIE x4 mode)
Second M.2 Socket M.2 Socket 3, with M key, type 2242/2260/2280 storage devices support (PCIE mode)
SATA 6Gb/s ports 6
Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10
Intel Optane Memory Ready Yes
LAN Intel I219V Gigabit LAN Controller with ASUS Turbo LAN Utility and ASUS LAN Guard
Audio CODEC Realtek S1220A 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC featuring Crystal Sound 3
USB Ports 1x USB 3.1 Gen2 (Type-C), 4x USB 3.1 Gen2 (2 at rear (teal) and 4 on-board),
5x USB 3.1 Gen1 ports (2 at rear (blue), 3 on-board), 6x USB 2.0 (2 at rear (black), 4 on-board)
Special Features 5-Way Optimisation, ASUS 5X Protection III, Aura Lighting Control, ASUS Quiet Thermal Solution
Back I/O Ports 1x PS/2 combo, 1x DisplayPort 1.2, 1x HDMI 1.4, LAN (RJ45), 3x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (teal),
USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C, 2x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (blue), 2x USB 2.0, Optical S/PDIF out, 5x Audio jacks
Accessories User manual, ASUS Q-Shield, 3x SATA 6Gb/s cables, M.2 Screw Package,
SCD, Supporting DVD, SLI HB BRIDGE (2-WAY-M), Q-connector (1 in 1), CPU fan holder
Operating System Windows 10 64-bit
Form Factor ATX, 305 x 244 mm
Warranty 24 months
EAN barcode 4718017129695.

intel has just released its ninth generation of iCore processirs and with it comes a new generation of motherboard. It's always an exciting moment for me to review new generation motherboard because it is opportunity for manufacturer to showcase what they've learned and what they developed in the past development cycle which is quite short I have to admit, only nine months from the Z270 to Z370 and Z370 to Z390. Anyways, I'm digressing, disgracing, 

digressing... any who today we are reviewing Asus latest Prime Z390-A, its flagship best seller motherboard. So yes lots of expectations and lots of scrutiny on that very new platform. Is it worth it? Will it bring us a bunch of new features which will make it worth the extra expenditure nine short months after the Z370 release? well wonder no more young damsel in distress! The Frenchman that you have here will answer those questions for you, right after this (laugh noise) (INTRO MUSIC) So before going to the motherboard I am going to cover the 

chipset. And the Z390 chipset is in all point identical to the Z370 chipset, its predecessor. The only differences are the number of available USB 3.1 second generation, the 10 gigabit ones, and for the first time we do have a Wi-Fi standard adapter which is integrated within the chipset so manufacturer won't have to add an external silicon chip for Wi-Fi adapter and that's actually pretty cool but it is also the problem we've met in the past three generation of chipset:

 nothing has really changed since the Z270 and the Z390 chipset is a refresh of the Z370 chipset. But that is also good news for us because both chipset would support the same processor. The Z370 is frontward compatible and this Z390 is backward compatible. So yes! 8700k, no problem. You can throw it on the Z390 and your i9-9900k, if anybody can find those, you can throw it on your Z370. I do have to say that early benchmarks show that the Z370 has a 

performance issue with the latest 9th generation of Intel processor and you might find yourself with the loss of 10 to 20% performances on those processors alone. But let's see, because they're going to be certainly some BIOS update and those performance differentials might just disappear. So let's jump right in the motherboard. So the Prime series is Asus entry-level for any given chipset and usually what that means is that asus is trying to do balance play or juggle between affordability and feature-rich product meaning that this is the biggest bang for your 

buck. this is where you're gonna find the richest motherboard for the lowest possible price and that is why usually I'm very excited to review those kind of motherboards but enough talking and let's do some unboxing. (MUSIC PLAYING) first we have a two-way SLI bridge, a fan bracket for extra airflow on our M.2 solid-state drive, a couple of SATA cables, our front connector bridge, a padded IO shield, our M.2 solid-state drive screw and screw raisers, and 

finally the usual user manual coupon and DVD drivers. So let's take a closer look to our motherboard. Form factor wise, we have an ATX motherboard meaning 30.5 centimeter long port 24.4 centimeter wide. No protective backplate on the back of our PCB. Powering it, we have a LGA 1151 CPU socket which will be compatible with the 8th and 9th generation iCore Intel CPUs. Memory wise we have the usual dual channel which can support up to 64 gigabytes 

of DDR4 RAM, overclockable up to 4,266 megahertz and that is two hundred and sixty-six megahertz more then available on its predecessor, the Prime Z370-A, so that is actually a five percent bump in the clock. That's pretty cool Staying in the memory, we have a dual M.2 solid-state drive configuration on our board. One which can support up to eleven centimeter long M.2 solid-state drive modules and one up to eight centimeter. Okay so now I want to point out

 at something which might seem insignificant, or a detail, but which has a lot of importance to me. The M.2 solid state drive heat shield is separated from the chipset heatsink and that is a big deal because in the previous generation they were merged together and that did bring an issue in thermo transfer, because M.2 Solid Stade drive tend to overheat much much faster than any other component in your build therefore the chipset will overheat as well and would impact 

overall performance of your build. So yes it looks like a small thing but it's actually a big deal and kudos to Asus for that. As in its two predecessors the Z390 chipset is Optane ready meaning that our M.2 Solid Stade drive can swap data up to 32 gigabit per second and as I mentioned previously it does also mean that they will thermos throttle very quickly and produce a lot of heat. And that is why we have a thermal pad ready for use on the other side of our M.2 Solid Stade drive heatshield. Moving upwards towards the PCIe Express's. We have 

six slots: three single slots, single speed, and three 16 slots with different speeds. Note that only the 16 slots closest to the CPU can deliver up to 16 full BUS speed, and it's been in gray to show that difference, so if you have only one video card, this is where you want it to be for optimal performances. If you are going for a two GPU configuration, both of our 16 slots will be sharing the same BUS bandwidth and therefore will have eight by eight BUS speed configuration. And 

if you are going to use the three 16 slots PCI Express Lanes we will have a eight by four and four BUS bandwidth configuration. Note that the two first 16 slot PCI Express have been metallically reinforced since they are the ones most likely to carry the heavy weight of video cards in the build. Staying in peripherals we have 3 USB 2nd generation plugs, and I'm gonna stop you right there. That seems to be a small detail once more, but there's a reason why we 

have more 2nd generation is based not only for your front panel but more and more accessories in your build are using these plugs to power and transfer data for example if you have a clever or intelligent power supply unit such as HX 1000i , from Corsair, which can read the wattage output and input of your power supply in it then you'll have to plug it in there so that the 

software can recognize it secondly if you are going to you know use a all-in-one water cooling a setup for your processor then it will take it's 5volt from a USB 2nd generation and of course you still need one for your front panel peripherals we also have a USB 3.1 first generator front panel connector which can transfer data up to five gigabit per second and finally a USB 3.1 first-generation type-c front panel connector SATA wise our motherboard is equipped with six 

third-generation SATA plugs which can all transfer up to six gigabit per second individually I wise we have starting from the left a ps2 keyboard mouse plug to second generation USB plug for USB 3.1 second generation including one type C and that is where the Z390 is different from the Z370 because we have more 3.1 second generations they can all transfer data up to 10 gigabit per second and that is also a small improvement but for people like me you are swapping that day in and out this is a well needed improvement to 3.1 first-generation USB 

plugs which can all transfer data up to five gigabits each individually I'll display an HDMI plug for our integrated graphics our usual Intel one Gigabit LAN and finally the usual 5+1 optical audio channels alright so we've seen the general aspect of the Prime Z90-A, and already we can tell there is a few nice evolution compared to its predecessor but here comes my favorite part of the reviews enthusiastic part of it and if you follow my channel you know that kind of a custom 

water-cooling geek and for me a good well-rounded motherboard needs to be able to do it all even on a budget and it needs to accommodate a custom water cooling as well as you know air flow or all-in-one cooling system and in this case the Prime Z390-A did not disappoint me. we have no less than 7 fan connector two of which are compatible with pump PWM and let's note that we can connect an external thermal sensor right here if needed and if five six or seven fans 

is not enough for your build who are you some Mariner you can install an extension cord right here and add up to eight additional fans coefficient time I did say earlier in the review that the enthusiastic part of the motherboard would be my favorite part of the review but it is not the case so aesthetical party is actually my favorite part and that's because this board, has all the other previous Prime motherboards, are AURA compliant, and in a nutshell if you do not know 

what alright compliancy is first I want you to take a closer look at yourself and your life and where you at right now is a young man or woman for you not to know what AURA compliancy is! You got a job. In a nutshell the AURA effect will sync all your different components RGB to glow and dance in a synchronous beautiful and glamorous way. And this board is fitted with two RGB strips. One right behind the IO roof and one right behind our chipset head shield. And if that is not enough you have an additional 2 RGB AURA compliant connectors on your 

motherboard. One here and one there. But I regret the fact that there is no RGB addressable connector, hmm... Alright, so conclusion time. The Prime Z390-A , for this kind of motherboard, well featured robust solid motherboard it was a good idea to have it and specifically given the evolutions and improvement that we've noticed from its predecessors a Prime Z370-A 

and I'm gonna mention very quickly the fact that we have more 3.1 second generation USBs on the board both for back IO and front panel the fact that you have more USB 2.0 front panel connector again a small thing but really needed because again accessories and components will need those to be powered and transfer information so that you can read it out on your computer the fact that there is a separation between the M.2 Solid State Drive heat shield and the chipset heatsink and finally the fact that RAM clock is bumping up from 4 Gigahertz to 

4,266. Five percent more about a bit more than five percent, it's more like six percent more clock for our RAM, so all those are really good stuff. On the lower point, what I'm gonna regret is a fact that we do not have the RGB addressable connector on this motherboard and I really wanted to see it. The fact that I'm not a fan of how it looks really, specifically the i/o housing, I think it's just too tall it's way too tall for what it is and if you take a closer look to it I mean I 

saw it but there is this big gap in space right there which is needless I don't know why they did this I'm not a fan of that particular thing but these points are not deal-breakers of course the pros completely outweigh the cons but the real issue here and the real elephant in the room like we say in France, is: Is it worth upgrading from your Prime Z370 to your Prime Z390? and the answer is no. If you had purchased the Prime Z370 last year, you motherboard has 95 percent 

or 90 percent of the feature present on this motherboard fir 1 and secondly your prime Z370 is compatible to the latest ninth generation of micro processor so for my money if I have a Prime Z370 or any Z370 motherboard in my build. I'm not gonna upgrade. I'm gonna keep with it, I'm gonna stay with it. I don't need to spend more money . If you have an older build, a Z270 or Z170, yes. it's definitely worth it, you have great value, really great features 

and even some engineering changes that Asus had foresight to apply on this particular board. So in this case, go for it. Don't think twice if you're still here it probably means because you like my site or you fell asleep in front of my review if it is the case wake up.

ASUS Prime Z390-A Motherboard LGA1151 (Intel 8th and 9th Gen) review

I've recently received from B&H now why did I need this motherboard well the processor that I had was 3.2 gigahertz and somehow I was able to make this thing work with every little bit of energy it had left in its 4-year old architecture now I have a much better processor which we'll talk about in another video but assembling this thing well not this thing the new thing it's much more shiny and it has a lot of really fancy colors assembling a motherboard for the first time

 can be a pretty daunting process so I've sped up what took me a unreasonable amount of time into a span of six minutes for your viewing enjoyment when you start looking for a new CPU the first thing you should look for is the socket type of the CPU in question for Intel the brand of both my old and new processors my old motherboard ran off of an old generation of an LGA 1150 socket more relevant models will run off of an 1151 socket look for that number under your motherboard purchase and processor purchase we took off our socks and assembled the 

PC on a tile floor as opposed to a carpet one to avoid static electricity build up some sware by using an anti-static wristband when working with computer parts you can clearly see that we did not we had no issues but venture at your own risk this might be the first time you've opened up your PC case in a while so spraying it down what the can of compressed air is recommended just don't ice yourself on the plug and now I don't know what to say either and I'm not gonna say it yeah so we got the board obviously it's gonna be you know you want to be really careful 

because you know this is very thin very fucking do that's what you call it that's what he calls it here's the yeah well no I know this one you don't just rip off yeah I mean you should have seen me in market right there but as you can see it's not going as you can see it's currently in its wrapper so we can't do that yet but once we take it out then we can boom all right it's in there good might as well boot it up right now all right cool so good news the motherboard went in yes bad news I got maybe we put two of them together and we just I got laptop RAM I got the 

wrong Ram stick God in anime on my side bitch yeah my sticks too small so I got some bigger sticks this is well that oh they animate the anime knife won't won't do it there's you know there's not a lot of things that I thought you had the power of got an anime on your side with anime and God not quite yeah too wide usually go with but go and now to cut the cable um I'm just kidding this is the processor i 5 gen gentlemen 8600 k 3.6 3.6 period such as a lot faster 

than 3.3 which was the old one it's it's real gaming speed is what that is correct it's real gamer hours so please rise for the gamer national anthem gaming ram i have getting around right here oh this is also my gaming laptop my gaming Chromebook and yeah but I like to call this Ram that Greg purchased from Best Buy yeah I like to call this spaceship weird flex but ok because it looks like a spaceship just the moment of truth upon truth the new processor is in you can't 

see it obviously because the coolant system is over top of it oh let's LEDs oh that's great that's really great for my case that's just that is black metal sheet that is really cool though that is pretty Navy a touristic laughs this doesn't work I'm gonna slip my through this fucking is ready gang shit I've had nothing but good experiences with this motherboard we can talk about the 

specs and how many different cables that it can hold and all sorts of superfluous details but really when it comes down to motherboards what you're looking for is build quality and I've never had any problems with Asus if you want this exact motherboard check out the link in the description to the bnh website I think I'm gonna get a lot of runtime out of this for my new processor review stay tuned .


 okay we're gonna move the coffee 
lake processors out of the way because today we're just taking a look at the asus prime z 370 a motherboard and of course it carries that same look the sort of white and black aesthetic as the x3 70 motherboard that I actually have in my main rig so let's go ahead and open up this box sort of get this thing on the box here and of course we're greeted by the motherboard itself and we're actually gonna set the motherboard aside for the moment and take a look at accessories 

in the box here rid this cardboard insert as well we have of course the i/o shield pretty standard it does have a padding on it which more premium motherboards do tend to have so nothing surprising there we have some SATA cables looks like we have this package only has one well that's interesting most of the time with Asus you get two ones with a right angle connector and two with two straight plugs but for some reason this package only has three so maybe that was just a mistake but so three SATA cables anyway you have some brackets here and these are 

these brackets are or this bracket rather is for a fan and it looks like it's up towards sort of the the power delivery area judging from the little picture on it so you have a fan that you can like I said a sit it's a fan that you can mount a little fan up by the power delivery I assume to give you a little bit better air flow up that way next up is the sli bridge and it is branded as a republic of gamers bridge even though the motherboard itself is not so that's a nice touch for those of you 

that may be going the dual NVIDIA GPU route we have a CPU installation tool-making processor installation simple so I assume you clip the processor into the bracket and then you don't have to worry about the alignment of it quite as much so I assume that's what this is for I'm probably never going to use that but it is a nice inclusion I guess especially if you're a first-time builder you have some screws for or standoffs rather for probably nvme drives a seuss 

normally brings this adapter to the table see if we can get that to folks a little bit this is a front panel connector adapter so basically you plug your front panel connectors into this and then this plugs directly into your motherboard so you can sort of do away from the motherboard and have more room to work with it's actually a nice inclusion I really like that we have a custom cable mod code so cool probably won't use that and then of course we have the booklet 

for the motherboard the user manual that's important we have a fan installation guide this is Brack for the bracket this guy so we have an installation guide cool and we have a driver disk which is useless to me because a I have an internet connection and B I do not have a disk drive on my computer so useless but I guess maybe for some people it's important and now we can clear that away and take a look at the main feature actually you know what I'm on the bring 

that box back so we have something to set the motherboard itself on and here is the motherboard itself okay so we're gonna start with the back io and it looks like we have on the far left side a couple USB 3.1 port so it looks like a type a as well as a Type C we have a DVI out a DisplayPort out an HDMI out we have a couple USB 2.0 what looks like a couple USB 3.0 we have a Gigabit LAN port and of course our audio solution now moving along to the top of the 

motherboard we have our 8 pin EPS connector as well as our heat sinks for our power delivery it looks like we have a 10 phase power delivery system here alongside our LGA 1151 socket of course this cannot be used for skylake or kb lake processors it is only to be used on these III 70 chipset with the new coffee Lake processor so it's not backwards compatible but it is still LGA 1151 moving up to the RAM slots we obviously have four of those for those of you familiar with 

a Seuss's solution there the clips are only at the top and at the bottom those clips actually actually do not move at all we have a couple fan headers here it looks like one is marked as a CPU and then a CPU optional fan header we have a chassis fan header over here along this side we have a couple physical switches we have a power switch as well as a memory okay switch so that's good to see moving down that right side we then have our 24 pin connector then also here on the right side we have our 6 SATA 6 gigabits as well as a USB 3.0 header for your case now 

running along the bottom here we have our front panel connectors we have an MDOT 2 fan header we have a couple USB 2.0 headers and that looks like another 3.0 header along here we have the RGB header which I will use at some point because if you'll notice I have LED lights in my case and that looks to be most of the notable sort of ports on the front slide I will point out there is an MDOT 2 slot here as well as another couple of fan headers up this way and it's also 

worth noting there's an MDOT 2 slot below this heating so I'm going to actually go ahead and remove this so we can get a better look at that and as I mentioned once you get rid of this shield you do get access to that second to drive slot that you can utilize under the little I guess it does act as a heating in fact we have a thermal pad here that when you install your drive you can peel off the backing here and suddenly you have a thermal pad there so this is a heat sink 

probably doesn't look like it has a whole lot of surface area so it may not do a ton of good but it will at least it should help dissipate a little bit of heat if you utilize that MDOT to slot as your primary and side note here with this other MDOT two I really appreciate that it's above the top PCIe by 16 slot because the graphics card won't block air from flowing over that iNDOT to drive so that's a good to see well thought out there from Asus on that front and in case anyone

 is wondering this is the backside of the motherboard no there is no I'm about to on the backside of this particular motherboard even though that is becoming more and more of a common thing not the case with the primes III 70 a okay now that we have a motherboard acquired and we've already taken a look at that we can get on to the more interesting task of taking a look at the i3 8350 K as well as we i-5 8400 so let me know in the comments down 
below which one of those two processors you are most interested in .

ASUS Prime Z390-A Motherboard LGA1151 (Intel 8th and 9th Gen) review

To find out more from Amazon link below