The motherboard itself is mainly black with various silver accents. The LGA1200 socket is enclosed by the two DIMM slots and the massive heatsinks for power supply and M.2 devices. There is no IO cover, but the silver port groups do not catch the eye in a negative way either. On the contrary, the purist look fits the design concept quite well, I think. Between IO and heatsink are the two 8-pin EPS connectors for the CPU power supply and three 4-pin fan connectors.
The top right corner is effectively the control panel with all the switches, buttons, connectors and measurement points any overclocker could wish for. Besides postcode, power and reset there are buttons for retry, Limp mode (effectively Safe Boot), CMOS Clear, plus and minus for CPU multiplier or BCLK, depending on the configuration, and two BIOS Profiles A and B.
There are also switches for selecting between the two BIOS chips, disabling automatic BIOS switching, LN2 modes and a trigger to throttle the CPU to the lowest multiplier. Next to it there are also measurement points for almost all voltages, with the exception of VTT DDR, but with differentiation of Vcore into Die-Sense, Socket-Sense and SuperIO. In addition, there are two SATA ports with a Windows XP compatible ASMedia controller and an on-board USB Type-A port, especially handy for flashing the BIOS even without a CPU. Oh and connectors for fans and various RGB standards are of course also present.
Relatively centrally on the right edge, a USB 3.1 for Type C has also made it onto the board, adjacent to the two BIOS chips. The 24-pin ATX connector had to make way for the bombardment of buttons and has been given a right-angled connector with an aluminum cover, which looks really chic. Besides that there is the usual assortment of 6 SATA ports typical for Z590.
The board offers 4 PCI-Express x16 slots, whereby the upper one is electrically x4 and the lower one x1, both only with PCIe 3.0 and connected via the chipset. Only the middle two slots are directly connected to the CPU with PCIe 4.0 and electrically wired with x16 and x8 respectively. Above and between the PCIe slots there are 3 110 mm M.2 slots with their respective heatsink cover, which visually flow over to the chipset cooler. Speaking of which, the CMOS battery is also hidden underneath there, which is quite unfortunate for maintenance.
Along the bottom edge you’ll find the usual ports for the front panel, USB 2.0 and 3.0, Thunderbolt, RGB and HD Audio. In the optically separated audio section of the PCB, there are unfortunately still a few golden and red capacitors, which disturb the visual picture somewhat. Apart from that, the overall aesthetic of the board is really kept completely uniformly. By the way, the audio codec is a somewhat older Realtek ALC1220, not that this is really relevant here.
The IO at the rear has not been skimped on. Besides the “Q-Flash” button for updating the BIOS, there is also an “OC Ignition” button to run the 12 V rail even when the CPU is switched off, very practical e.g. for fans in sub-zero overclocking. Dedicated PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard are also there for Windows XP compatibility, along with a total of 8 USB ports, 1 of which is type C, an HDMI output for the iGPU, the usual 7.1 audio ports and jacks for the WLAN or Bluetooth antennas.
15 Antworten
Kommentar
Lade neue Kommentare
Urgestein
1
Mitglied
Veteran
Urgestein
Urgestein
Veteran
Veteran
Neuling
Urgestein
Neuling
Urgestein
Alle Kommentare lesen unter igor´sLAB Community →