On the whole, the MSI Z490 Godlike does just about have the edge in straight speeds, but if I'm buying a Core i9 10900K I want to overclock the hell out of it, and I got a result I would be happy running at consistently from the Asus, where the Godlike just got a little too toasty for my taste at 5.3GHz all-core. The Taichi has a beefed up 15-phase VRM system fed by dual 8-pin power connectors designed to cope with the demands of 10th Gen processors. The power componentry and cooling isn't enough to stop the thirsty CPU from throttling when it's pushed to its 5.3GHz all-core maximum. In addition to more slots and ports than you might know what to do with, the MEG Z490 Godlike squarely targets the gamer set with its customizable RGB lighting and OLED panel to make your gaming rig a veritable canvas. The overall bundle, build quality, and OC performance have me siding with the ROG board in the head-to-head, but it's a close run thing, and you could also make a convincing argument for the MSI Godlike being the best Z490 motherboard around. If you choose the Hero you get the advantage of impressive 5G networking, excellent build quality and you’ll have a capable and refined motherboard. Welcome to our freeware PC speed test tool. If you're buying the MSI MEG Z490 Godlike, you can almost certainly afford it. Note that Gigabyte is also touting its PCIe 4.0 support, though as we said in the intro, it’s not something that should factor into a purchase decision. Does any Z490 motherboard have a genuinely better VRM? There’s also rear mosfet baseplates, which all told means you can overclock to your heart’s content. If you’ve got top shelf cooling, then the Hero will handle it. Perhaps the only drawback, and honestly it’s hard to even call it that when the differences are so small, was that performance tended to trail the pack in many cases. Our memory took exactly one try to get to DDR4-4000 16-16-16 which is a nice performance sweet spot. Its Godlike boards have really cemented the idea of the ultra-enthusiast motherboard which cost, if you'll pardon the redacted expletive, f*** you money. I mean, why would you though with its lovely retro, almost analogue theme. I cannot pretend that this makes any sense from a rational standpoint, y'know, one where money actually exists and comes in finite amounts. The test … Both are great high-end boards, but I'm going to side with the Asus for now. X570 Creator . We wish is was a few dollars cheaper but if you do go for the Maximus XII Hero, it will do your system justice. England and Wales company registration number 2008885. Just to put upfront once again, this is not going to be a review of this motherboard, just an in-depth overview, since as I said I still don’t have any 10th gen Intel’s Comet Lake CPU’s on my hands, but hopefully soon. Check out all of our Z490 reviews below. Size : E-ATX | Memory support: 4x DIMM, up to 128GB, DDR4-4700 (OC) | Expansion slots: 2x PCIe 3.0 x16 (or x8/x8), 1x PCIe 3.0 x4 | Storage: 2x M.2, 2x M.2 (DIMM.2 board), 8x SATA 6Gbps | Rear USB: 10x USB 3.2, 2x USB 2.0 | Video ports: 2x Thunderbolt 3 ports on extension card (DP1.4) | Network : 1x 10Gb Marvell ethernet, 1x 2.5Gb Intel ethernet, Intel WiFi 6 wireless. Starting with the best value entry-level … Prime Z490-P caters to daily users and all builders looking for well-rounded specs and a range of options for performance tuning via intuitive software and firmware. The rarified air of the ultra-enthusiast pairing at the top of the test might make one giddy, but the Z490 Gaming Carbon will bring us back down to earth without a bump. The Z490 Taichi doesn’t deviate too much from its recent siblings in terms of its looks. The Asus ROG boards have always been high-end offerings—though there are lower-spec options here in this guide too—but I do feel that MSI has been the enabler. STEEL LEGEND (more) Z490 Steel Legend. It looks terrific. All that hardware means you'll need some serious cooling though. At a midrange price, the Asus ROG Strix Z490-E Gaming looks, feels, and operates like a top-end Intel motherboard with just a few of the premium bells and whistles knocked off. Fortunately, we're here to help. Gigabyte got mostly everything right with the Z490 AORUS ULTRA motherboard. It’s not inferior so to speak, but the Max XII Extreme, MSI, and Gigabyte boards have a better VRM spec along with dual 8-pin power vs the 8+4 pin of the Hero. Each choke is rated for 60A, which is less than the 90A the MSI, Asus, and Gigabyte offer. The MSI MEG Z490 Ace isn't as powerful or feature-rich as the MSI MEG Z490 Godlike, but for a mainstream system, the Ace is probably the best Z490 motherboard for general use. It’s nothing to worry about, but when you’re comparing motherboards that are all genuinely strong contenders, you have to look for some differentiation, and for the Aorus, this is it. Join us … We’re usually impressed with Gigabyte’s audio and that’s also the case here, with an ESS Sabre DAC and quality component choices. It’s got an intuitive, easy to navigate BIOS and a typically strong Taichi feature set. You get a nice splash of RGB lighting too of course. Thank you for signing up to TechRadar. The Taichi incorporates no less than three small fans into the heatsink, though thankfully they are all but silent and couldn’t be heard above the sound of our AIO CPU cooler and pump. Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, We haven't had a chance to test the boards ourselves, but we can help narrow down your search to the best Z490 motherboards for gaming, enterprise, or whatever your particular need may be. A vaguely affordable Z490 motherboard with competitive performance, Size : ATX | Memory support: 4x DIMM, up to 128GB, DDR4-4800 (OC) | Expansion slots: 3x PCIe 3.0 (x16/x0/x4 or x8/x8/x4), 2x PCIe 3.0 x1 | Storage: 2x M.2, 6x SATA 6Gbps | Rear USB: 5x USB 3.2, 2x USB 2.0 | Video ports: 1x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI | Network : 1x 2.5Gb LAN, Intel WiFi 6 wireless. Asus Prime Z490-P or MSI Z490-A Pro. B460 Steel Legend. With … It’s got a small fan that only spins up when it’s required. I might still struggle with the naming scheme, and the similarly offensive price tag, but it's tough to argue with the technology that it offers. The sparse back panel and missing OLED displays will tell you we're back into normal motherboard territory again. The motherboard BIOS used is … Bath ASUS Z490 series motherboards features a teamed-power-stage architecture that unleashes the full potential of the latest Intel ® Core™ CPUs. Heck if it was $50 cheaper, it might have been a winner. So while you need a whole new motherboard platform for Intel's new chips, there's a strong chance it will last for a few CPU generations to come. They might seem crazy, but people are buying them… and if you want the best Z490 motherboard experience that's what you're aiming for. Still, it wasn't throttling even so, but I wouldn't be happy running at that level consistently. The MSI MEG Z490 Godlike is without a doubt one of the best Z490 motherboards out there. You also get the fairly standard 6 SATA ports and triple M.2 slots which distinctively feature thermal padding for both sides of the drive. This puts the onus on the consumer to get a really good motherboard for Intel Comet Lake and the Z490 boards are the best that you can get for Comet Lake. Some manufacturers, such as MSI, are claiming PCIe 4.0 support on their Z490 motherboards, even though it is not supported by 10th generation CPUs and hence cannot be validated. The first thing we noticed when taking the Z490 Aorus Master out of its box was its weight. The MSI MEG Z490 Ace isn't as powerful or feature-rich as the MSI MEG Z490 Godlike, but for a mainstream system, the Ace is probably the best Z490 motherboard for general use. To test the N7 Z490, I put together a test rig using an NZXT H710i case, Intel Core i7-10700K CPU, 16GB of speedy RAM, RTX 2060 SUPER from ZOTAC, and an M.2 SSD. Core™ (i9/i7) support DDR4 up to 2933; Core™ (i5/i3), Pentium ® and Celeron ® support DDR4 up to 2666. Chris Szewczyk So, if you're looking to build a gaming rig and you've go some money to spend, but you're not swimming in coins like Scrooge McDuck, the Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Master just might be the motherboard to do the trick. What I will say is that features list isn't just stuffed with makeweight extras, things just stuffed into the package to fill it out and try and justify that price. Faster cores and more of them, faster networking, faster and higher capacity memory, faster storage, and faster USB amongst other things. The performance I got out of the Godlike put it a shade ahead of the Maximus XII Extreme in gaming terms, though only by a couple of frames per second at best, but it did stretch that lead a touch when it came to video encoding. The board features plenty of built-in options for that, but with the cash you save on this midrange board expect to pay it back in trying to keep it from running too hot. CREATOR (more) W480 Creator. Don’t forget that Asus offers the Maximus XII Apex if OC is your main game. GIGABYTE Z490 Aorus Xtreme (Intel Z490) ATX Motherboard Review GIGABYTE's Z490 Aorus Xtreme is our second Intel Z490-based motherboard review. Future US, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor, Z490 Aorus Master review Behold The Master Cometh Comet Lake-S. Z490 has arrived, in this review, we look at the Z490 Aorus Master from Gigabyte. I saw on many forums that the 10900K only supports 128GB of RAM at 2666 MHz and it was not possible on Z390 Motherboards and I am wondering if it will be possible on Z490. The Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Master is about as close to a workhorse motherboard as you are going to find. Interestingly, where some Aorus boards tend to light up like a laser light show, the Master really dials down the RGB with just a little bit of subtle lighting over the rear I/O and the chipset heatsink. NY 10036. Z490 Motherboard Reviews. If that's not what you're after, then the MSI MEG Z490 Ace might just be as good as it gets. UserBenchmark will test your PC and compare the results to other users with the same components. Ace by name, Ace by nature. All rights reserved. You will receive a verification email shortly. If your current gaming machine is several years old then upgrading right now will get you a faster system in every way. Check out all of our Z490 reviews below. First of all the very high performance speaks for the mainboard. BA1 1UA. X299 Creator. MSI has knocked it out of the park with the Ace’s strong VRM design. It has enough RGB lighting to satisfy the gamers out there who want to look the part as well as enough bus connections to put up some quality hardware to boot. Upgrade to Comet Lake with the best Z490 motherboards around. The K-series CPUs have 125W TDPs, though the higher core count models will actually pull a lot more power than that. © While not as specced out as the best Z490 motherboards out there, the Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Master does everything you need it to do and it does it competently, down to the customizable RGB lighting. Don't necessarily let that put you off, it’s still a board we’d be proud to own. Try as we might, 5.3 GHz is a step too far for our cooling. The latest Intel 10th Gen CPUs need the best Z490 motherboards to deliver their best work. But if we're talking about the best Z490 motherboard, for me, this is it. You also get great performance. Z490 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3. It says a lot about Z490 motherboard pricing when the Hero – usually a value offering in the Asus Maximus range – sells for an eye watering $400. The best Z490 motherboard if you want to sell that other kidney too, Size: E-ATX | Memory support: 4x DIMM, up to 128GB, DDR4-5000 (OC) | Expansion slots: 3x PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16/x0/x4 or x8/x8/x4), 1x PCIe 3.0 x1 | Storage : 3x M.2, 6x SATA 6Gbps, 2x M.2 Xpander-Z | Rear USB: 8x USB 3.2, 2x USB 2.0 | Video ports: 2x Thunderbolt 3 | Network : 1x 10Gb Aquantia, 1x 2.5Gb Realtek LAN, Intel WiFi 6 wireless.