Intel Z490 – Page 4 – Motherboard Review

MSI Adding Resizable-BAR to Intel 4xx Motherboards

December 4, 2020 by Stephen

As a world-leading motherboard brand, MSI contributes to providing gamers and creators extremely pleasant experience when users choose MSI motherboards. For the sake of fulfillment of goals, MSI keeps updating the latest version BIOS for users to download and to increase performance. At the present, MSI prepares to release BIOS update for all Intel 400-series motherboards, including Z490, B460 and H410 chipsets. According to planning schedule, the first batch is expected to Z490 motherboards. All BIOS update for Z490 will be available by this week. As for B460 and H410 motherboards, the BIOS update will be completely released in the next two weeks. Please follow the product pages for the updated BIOS.

MSI MEG Z490 GODLIKE

December 2, 2020 by Stephen

In case the name wasn’t a clue-and-a-half: This is no modest motherboard. MSI’s MEG Z490 Godlike is the company’s Intel Z490 flagship, competing directly with the likes of Asrock’s Z490 Taichi and Asus’ Z490 ROG Maximus XII Extreme in terms of both price and features. (The Z490 chipset is the top-end chipset for Intel’s latest desktop CPUs, allowing for extensive CPU and memory tweaking.) With an MSRP of $749.99, this deluxe motherboard certainly isn’t for the casual user or PC builder.

ASUS Adds Resizable BAR Support to Z490, H470 & B460 Motherboards

December 2, 2020 by Stephen

Resizable BAR (Base Address Register), the technology behind AMD’s Smart Access Memory (SAM), isn’t exclusive to Ryzen owners anymore. Asus has released an entire wave of new firmwares for various Z490 motherboards that enable the Resizable BAR feature.

The firmware, which sports the 1002 version number, is fresh out of the oven as Asus evidently uploaded it just yesterday. The firmware is currently in the beta stage so there might be some bugs here and there. It also lacks a detailed description of the changes. We can, however, confirm that the 1003 firmware effectively brings support for Resizable BAR, as evidenced by the newly added “Above 4G Decoding” and “Re-Size BAR Support” options in our ROG Maximus XII Apex motherboard’s BIOS.

ASUS ROG STRIX Z490-I GAMING

November 25, 2020 by Stephen

The Z490 chipset is built to accommodate the best of Comet Lake, however some prefer to use small mini-ITX configurations rather than ATX format monsters. In this game, manufacturers have not turned a deaf ear and have released a few models in small format, allowing you to take advantage of the best of the latest generation of processors from Intel, at least on paper.

ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XII APEX

November 25, 2020 by Stephen

Performance on the Apex was right around most other boards, particularly those with a bit more freedom from the Intel specification. Gaming performance was on par or better than most boards, and the other data sets showed similar results. As far as overclocking, we had zero issues pushing our Intel Core i9-10900K CPU to 5.2 GHz. RAM overclocking was painless, easily handling our DDR4 4000 kit. However, the board set the System Agent (VccSA) and IO (VccIO) voltage higher than most.

NZXT N7 Z490

November 25, 2020November 19, 2020 by Stephen

If we are used to the quartet of usual manufacturers in France, a few players have appeared in recent years in our provinces, in particular with NZXT, which has decided to release its own motherboards, and this for 2 generations of chipset at Intel. This will therefore be the third iteration for the manufacturer, which presents its N7 Z490 card , which the Comptoir has tested for you, in order to see what the outsider is worth.

EVGA Z490 Dark

November 25, 2020November 16, 2020 by Stephen

In this review I’ll be looking at what might be considered the only game in town for Extreme Overclocking, the EVGA Z490 Dark. Much like what DFI did with their LanParty boards the EVGA Dark is what I would call a revision and enhancement to the EVGA Z490 FTW that improves and tunes the motherboard to handle all sorts of overclocking and extreme system builds while still offering out of box performance for fans of high-end hardware.

ASUS ROG STRIX Z490-I GAMING

November 13, 2020 by Stephen

A rare review of something compact does not begin with words about the difficulties of pushing top straps and equipment into a compact format and the use of non-standard engineering solutions for this. This is doubly relevant when we are talking not about a slightly truncated mini-ATX motherboard, where, in general, even without liters of sweats from engineers, everything climbs so well, but about choosing a real hardcore player!

NZXT N7 Z490

November 25, 2020November 13, 2020 by Stephen

Motherboards are rarely aesthetically pleasing. Sure, we’ve long since moved on from green PCBs and cream-colored slots, but the majority of MOBOs still look ugly. Most opt for a “gamer” look, which is fine for some folks, but what about those who value a minimalist and clean PC build? Enter the N7 Z490 motherboard from NZXT, with its frankly beautiful design.

ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XII EXTREME

November 10, 2020 by Stephen

The ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XII EXTREME is the latest iteration of the Maximus line which began about 10 years ago as one of the earliest entries into the ROG family. This one utilizes Intel’s Z490 Express chipset and supports it’s LGA 1200 socket processors and Intel’s 10th Gen Comet Lake CPUs. This is not what you would call a value solution. The Maximus XII Extreme costs of $742.99 on Amazon at the time of this writing.