Been a couple of weeks since I was finally was able to put my build together and its been a good ride so far with a small bump or two.
Firstly initial setup went fairly well, ram (16gb @3600) seated with out issues, cpu (i7 10700k) went in good although the chip slightly slipped in my fingers and i had to quickly save it; luckily none of the pins were damaged so a HUGE sigh of relief when it POST'ed. The m.2 heatsinks are hefty and have a good solid feel to them and i haven't had any of the issues others have had with the m.2 slots. Note; the very top uncovered m.2 slot is not functional and is reserved for when 11th gen cpu's with gen 4 m.2/PCIe support launch so people should be happy that the board has a gen 4 upgrade path without having to replace the board.
Once everything posted and after a bios update (q-flash was very handy) it came time to deal with the only real issue Ive had with the board. Trying to set up both m.2 nvme drives (SN750's) in RAID 0 is not straight forward at all and your gonna have to look up how to do it (involves enabling RST on both drives first in a menu separate from ez raid, then using ez raid) and gigabyte should try to streamline this process more since nvme's are becoming more mainstream now. Once that issue was solved everything else ran smoothly. The cpu was OC'd a bit and PCH temps rarely went over 55c even in hour long benchmark tests and i was able to get a rock steady 5.0ghz i7 10700k @1.28v (do plan on upping it to 5.1 so ill update this review once those results get in).
Other notes; the RGB on the board its self is minimal but that doesn't really bother me since i have a windowless fractal r6, on that same note i cant comment on gigabytes RGB software either since I don't care much for pretty lights. There are RGB strip headers on the board so you do have that option. Keep all of this in mind if RGB is important to you.
The built in WiFi receiver was a godsend when setting up windows due to the fact the the Ethernet plug is non-functional until you update the drivers (which you cant really do unless windows is installed first) so make sure you have a wifi connection or you will run into some issues and will have to dowload all drivers on a seperate computer/laptop and then install them on the new pc (if it is a fresh build of course).
Using the top covered m.2 slot disables SATA ports 4 & 5 but this is a chipset restriction if I'm not mistaken (who needs more than 4 ports anyway?).
I would comment if there were any issues with any of the PCIe x16 slots but I'm holding out for and RTX 30xx (or big navi if the rumors are true) so ill come back and update once i get my hands on a gpu.
Overall this is a great board if your looking for a minimalist look paired with ample enough features that make this a very competitive Z490 board, especially in the sub $300 range. I would highly recommend especially if RGB isn't your thing.
| RAM | DDR4 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 5000 MHz |
| Wireless Type | Bluetooth |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 4 |
