Final Thoughts
As I said in the beginning of this review I’ve always been a fan of ASUS’s PRIME series of motherboards and that still holds true. These motherboards give you everything that you want without all of the extras that make other motherboards more expensive. When it comes to a Z490 motherboard you are getting everything that you would want including a VRM that can handle a Core i9-10900K, two M.2 slots, USB 3.2 Gen 2, support for memory up to 4800 MHz, and 2.5G LAN.
One thing I really like about this board is how it is sort of designed for beginners. The memory slots are color-coded for dual-channel operation, which is something you really don’t see anymore. This helps a beginner install their memory in the right slots. Even the top PCI-Express slot is colored different than the others so a user knows that is the default slot. Things like this are great for beginers and we can’t forget about the Armoury Crate, which automatically gets installed when you install Windows. This makes it easy to download software and drivers.
When it comes to looks I do have a soft spot for the white and silver you see on the PRIME series boards. Overall I think the board looks quite good, but I do feel like not including the bottom M.2 heatsink really sort of makes the board look complete. That extra silver and white towards the bottom of the board really would go a long way. Also I am not really sure what the point of the small bit of RGB under the top part of the chipset heatsink? It should have gone around the entire heatsink. That top part where it is, is likely to be covered up by your graphics card.
When it comes to performance all of the Z490 motherboards have scored pretty close to each other in all of our tests. I do have to say that overclocking with this board was a little more tricky than others. On most Z490 boards we were able to get an all-core overclock to 5.1 or 5.2 GHz with a Vcore of 1.35V or below, but with this board we had to go up to 1.38V.
Right now this board is selling at our favorite online retailer for $214.99. At that price you really can’t go wrong. Overall ThinkComputers gives the ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard an 8 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Price
– Good overall performance
– Integrated I/O shield and cover
– Plenty of USB ports and headers
– Color-coding of memory and PCI-Express slots is great for beginners
Cons:
– Bottom M.2 slot does not come with a heatsink
– RGB on the chipset heatsink doesn’t make much sense
– Overclocking was a litte more tricky than other motherboards
