ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard Review

ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard Overview

The ASUS PRIME Z490-A is an ATX motherboard. Like the PRIME boards before it, it has a white, silver, and black color design. The PCB is black with white streaks across it and then you have white and silver accents. Many people are not fans of the white and silver, but I actually like it quite a lot.

ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard

Starting at the CPU socket we have Intel’s new LGA1200 socket, this socket supports 10th generation Intel Core “Comet Lake-S” desktop processors and should support the upcoming “Rocket Lake-S” processors. Surrounding the CPU socket we have our power delivery components. ASUS lists their power delivery components as “A VRM with 12+2 DrMOS power stages delivers the power and efficiency that the latest Intel processors demand.” These are paired into 6 phases (CPU) and will deliver 540A to your processor. The power delivery components are covered by two large silver heatsinks.

ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard

At the top corner of the board you’ll find your 8-pin EPS connector as well as an additional 4-pin. Moving over to the opposite corner of the board you’ll find your CPU fan header, optional CPU fan header, a 4-pin standard RGB header, and a 3-pin addressable RGB header.

ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard

There are four memory slots on this board which support up to 128GB of DDR4-4800 memory. The slots are color-coded for dual-channel operation and they do not have the locks on bottoms. This makes swapping out memory once you have your graphics card installed extremely easy.

ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard

Along the edge of the board you find indication LEDs for boot, VGA, DRAM, and CPU, your 24-pin ATX power connector, a USB 3.2 gen 1 header, and a USB 3.2 gen 2 internal connector. Moving down the board there are six SATA 6GB/s ports, which are at a 90-degree angle to not get in the way of your graphics cards. All six of the ports are controlled by the Z490 chipset and support RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 modes.

ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard

Along the bottom of the board you’ll find the rest of your headers and connections which include your front panel audio header, COM port header, 4-pin standard RGB header, 3-pin addressable RGB header, power switch, 4pin fan header, two USB 2.0 headers, Thunderbolt header, front panel headers, and two more 4-pin fan headers. For those wondering about audio ASUS is using their Crystal Sound 3 solution which makes use of the Realtek S1220A Codec and has complete PCB isolation from the rest of the components of the board.

ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard

As far as expansion slots go you have three PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x16/x8/x4) and three PCI-Express 3.0 x1 slots. The top two x16 slots are metal reinforced and the top slot is color-coded, which is great for first-time builders.

ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard

There are two storage M.2 slots on this board. The top one sits right below the top x16 PCI-Express slot. It does have an included M.2 heatsink and supports both SATA and PCI-Express M.2 drives. The bottom slot sits towards the bottom of the board and does not have a heatsink. It only supports PCI-Express M.2 drives. Below the first M.2 slot is a smaller M.2 WiFi slot if you wanted to install an M.2 WiFi slot. Above all of the slots are two more 4-pin fan headers, giving you a total 7 including your CPU fan headers.

ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard

The rear I/O of the board has a nice cover over it which says “PRIME” and “Z490 Series”. It sort of connects with the VRM heatsinks and overall looks pretty good. Of course we have an integrated I/O shield too. As far as rear I/O ports from left to right you have DisplayPort, HDMI, two USB, four USB 3.2 gen 2 (3x Type-A, 1x Type-C), 2.5G LAN, two USB 3.2 gen 1, and your audio connections. For those wondering the 2.5G LAN is powered by the Intel I225-V.

ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard

For those wondering about RGB lighting you have a small strip on the I/O cover and another one under the top of the chipset heatsink. The one above the chipset heatsink will likely get covered up by your graphics card.

ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard ASUS PRIME Z490-A Motherboard

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