For some time, ASRock has been using the Fatal1ty branding on their high end products - a tie back to the days of old, where Quake was king, and bright, flashy branding was cool. However, Fatal1ty has given way to ASRock's "Phantom Gaming" brand, with a much more subtle aesthetic. All black? Yes please! Beefy heatsinks? Yessir! First sighted on ASRock's limited availability (unfortunately) GPU line, the Phantom Gaming brand has come to motherboards - slowly taking over the performance space within ASRock's lineup. This particular model uses the Intel Z390 chipset - what Z370 should have been, but I digress. Let's dive in!
A heads up to the community: This marks my last review for SFFn. I'll continue posting news as it comes along, (including CES next week), as well as continue my community leadership here, but I'm moving on to a new project in the coming weeks/months. @3lfk1ng Will be taking over the lead in reviews, however, articles may not be as frequent as they have been.
Nice last review! Keep us posted about the new project. Mine is on the way and I have a question, what RAM have you used? I saw some people complaining about the ram slots proximity, especially with the G.Skill Trident Z. Did you noticed something?
John, thank you for all your excellent reviews! I like the new direction ASRock is taking here and I may have to give ASRock a try for my next build. I would personally much rather have "ASRock" branding on the heatsink instead of "Phantom Gaming", or nothing at all.
Big thanks to you John, for all you've done at SFFn and for SSF - good luck with the next adventure. I too am looking forward to trying some ASrock kit sometime, I really would like a dual M.2 ITX board like the Asus Strix family. Ok, so Phantom Gaming may not be the greatest branding, but is does get us away from the too red Fatal1ty used until recently. Go go ASrock!
@confusis Best of luck in your next endeavors John! Really like this board also. So a request for @ASRock System : AM4 version with 2x M.2 and the beefy VRMs and heatsink. If the leaks regarding Ryzen 3000 hold 12 or more cores in itx sounds amazing!
Like the overall looks of the board. What I don't like: built in M.2 heatsink and the limitations it presents SATA ports jammed in behind the RAM slots...ugh. These are both potential deal breakers, depending on who the system is built for and what their intended usage will be.
I have put on EK Monarch RAM heat sinks on my memory and they fit just fine (although the EK logos need to be facing out, which isn't a big deal). TBH, I prefer this orientation with the SATA connectors, as opposed to jamming the front panel connectors in a weird location, like what Asus did. I would rather they come up with a different solution for the BIOS header pins and ideally would have used that space for a USB-C front panel header with a last available USB 3.1 Gen 2 HSIO from the chipset.
Got a question - is this board compatible with the Noctua C14? The Asus Z370 barely fit - the heatpipes made contact with the VRM heatsink and I had to use electrical tape to prevent it from scuffing. It's hard to tell if that's going to be an issue with this one too or not. These newer boards are becoming a pain for top down cooling.
Can I ask a stupid question: what was John referring to when he mentioned intel’s product stack is a nightmare? I’m new to PCs and don’t know what specifically is wrong with intels software currently. I bought this board and a 9700k for an sff build. I more I read about that chip the more I wonder if I made a mistake lol.
@NastyNick The software is fine, it's just that currently Intel has umpteen chipsets, and several hundred (slight exaggeration) CPU SKUs. Minutiae: Coffee lake chipsets: H310 B360 H370 Q360 B365 Q370 Z310 Z390 C232 C236 C242 C246 Coffee lake CPU SKUs: i7-9900K i7-9900KF i7-9700K i7-9700KF i7-8086K i7-8700K i7-8700 i7-8700T i5-9600K i5-9600KF i5-9400 i5-9400F i5-8600K i5-8600 i5-8600T i5-8500 i5-8500T i5-8400 i5-8400T i3-9350KF i3-8350K i3-8300 i3-8100 i3-8100T Pentium Gold G5600 Pentium Gold G5500 Pentium Gold G5500T Pentium Gold G5400 Pentium Gold G5400T Celeron G4920 Celeron G4900 Celeron G4900T Xeon 2186G Xeon 2176G Xeon 2146G Xeon 2136 Xeon 2126G Xeon 2174G Xeon 2144G Xeon 2134 Xeon 2124G Xeon 2124 Xeon 2104G Compared to AMD's current gen: Chipsets: X470 B450 CPUs: Athlon 200GE Athlon Pro 200GE Athlon 220GE Athlon 240GE Ryzen 3 2200GE Ryzen 3 Pro 2200GE Ryzen 3 2200G Ryzen 3 Pro 2200G Ryzen 5 2400GE Ryzen 5 Pro 2200GE Ryzen 5 2400G Ryzen 5 Pro 2400G Ryzen 3 2300X Ryzen 5 2500X Ryzen 5 2600E Ryzen 5 Pro 2600 Ryzen 5 2600 Ryzen 5 2600X Ryzen 7 2700E Ryzen 7 Pro 2700 Ryzen 7 2700 Ryzen 7 Pro 2700X Ryzen 7 2700X (Excluding the HEDT and server platforms.. then the lists just get stupid long)
Intel is perfectly fine, and their CPUs are great. Their main advantage is that many programs are better optimized for Intel due to their past market dominance. They just have a terrible track record of “forcing” users to upgrade chipsets (motherboard) along with every (other) generation of CPU upgrades.
Hi I would like to buy this mainboard, I have doubts about the temperatures. What temperature has PCH under load and idle?
