ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac Preview

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac Motherboard Overview
For the Phantom Gaming Motherboard series ASRock is going with a black PCB with silver and red accents. I like the overall look of the board, this is of course an ATX board with official dimensions of 12.0-in x 8.8-in.

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac

Starting at the top center of the board we have the LGA1151 socket. Z390 boards will support both 8th generation and 9th generation Intel Core processors. ASRock has outfitted this board with a 10-phase power design that makes use of premium 45A power chokes. The power delivery components are covered by two heatsinks, which are not overly large, but should get the job done.

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac

At the top of the board above the CPU socket is your 8-pin EPS connector, a 4-pin CPU fan header, and a 3-pin PWM header. Interestingly enough there are two more 4-pin fan headers below the CPU socket, almost directly in the center of the motherboard.

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac

Moving over to the edge of the board you have your 4 DDR4 DIMM slots, 24-pin ATX power connection, and a USB 3.1 gen 1 header. The DDR4 slots are normal and are not metal reinforced, but do support DDR4 memory up to 4300 MHz.

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac

As we come down the board there are six SATA 6GB/s ports which come out at a 90-degree angle.

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac

At the bottom of the board you’ll find the rest of your headers and connections. From left to right you have your HD audio header, COM port header, TPM header, two 4-pin RGB headers, an addressable RGB header, two USB 2.0 headers, a USB 3.1 gen 1 header, two 4-pin fan headers, and your front panel headers.

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac

As far as expansion slots go you have two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots and four PCI-Express 3.0 x1 slots. The x16 slots do have ASRock’s steel armor on them and with a single graphics card installed the top slot will always run a x16 speeds, but if you have two cards installed both slots will run at x8 speeds. You’ll also notice the PCH heatsink, which has the Phantom Gaming logo on it. There are RGB LEDs under it which will provide a cool under glow.

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac

There are two Ultra M.2 (PCIe x4) slots on this board. The first is above the top PCI-Express x16 slot and supports M.2 drives up to 80mm. The second slot is towards the bottom of the board and is covered by a large heatsink. This slot supports longer 110 mm M.2 drives.

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac

ASRock is using their Purity Sounds 4 audio on this board, which makes use of the Realtek ALC892 audio codec and Nichicon fine gold series audio capacitors. The audio section of the board has complete PCB isolation from the rest of the board.

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac

Finally we come down to the rear I/O which is nicely covered with armor that says Phantom Gaming on it. Unlike the higher models in the Phantom Gaming series the I/O cover here does not have RGB lighting.

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac

So for your rear I/O connections from left to right you have HDMI out, WiFi antennas, a PS/2 port, two USB 3.1 gen 1 ports, DVI, two USB 3.1 gen 2 ports (1x Type-A, 1x Type-C), Ethernet, two more USB 3.1 gen 1 ports, and your audio connections. The Phantom Gaming series comes standard with 2.5 Gigabit LAN provided by the Realtek Dragon RTL8125AG. On this board you’ll also get dual-band WiFi provided by the Intel 802.11ac WiFi Module.

ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac

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