EVGA Z390 FTW Motherboard Overview
Taking a look at the EVGA Z390 FTW Motherboard we can see that it has an all black PCB with black and silver accents. This is the same design scheme that EVGA used on the Z370 version of this board and I think that it looks great and more importantly does not look overdone like many motherboards we see these days.
Starting at the CPU socket we of course have Intel’s LGA1151 socket. Z390 boards will support both 8th generation and 9th generation Intel Core processors. This board features an 11-phase power design. The power delivery components are covered by two large black heatsinks, which are connected by a solid piece of anodized aluminum that connects to the rear I/O, making this entire section of the board look like a single piece.
At the top left of the board behind the top heatsink you’ll find your 8-pin EPS connector and a 4-pin fan header. Moving over a little bit you’ll find your CPU fan and CPU fan 2 headers.
Coming over from the CPU socket you’ll find four DDR4 DIMM slots, which are metal-reinforced. This board supports up to 64GB of 4133MHz+ DDR4 memory. At the top edge of the board are two 4-pin RGB headers, another 4-pin fan header, power and reset buttons, a POST code display (which will also show CPU temp in real time), a USB port (which allows you to flash your BIOS without a CPU), 24-pin ATX power connection, and a USB 3.1 gen 2 type-C header.
Moving down the board there is a USB 3.1 gen 1 header and six SATA 6GB/s ports all of which are at a 90-degree angle. You’ll notice there is an indent in the board where the USB 3.1 header is, this is to make connecting / routing your USB 3.1 cable easier.
At the bottom of the board is where you’ll find the rest of your connections and headers. From left to right you have a 6-pin PCI-Express power connection, HD audio header, two 4-pin fan headers, two USB 2.0 headers, and your front panel headers. All of these are set at a 90-degree angle as well.
When it comes to expansion slots you have two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 slot, and two PCI-Express 3.0 x1 slots. The two x16 slots are metal-reinforced. When you have two card installed the second slot will run at x8 speeds.
There are three M.2 slots on this board. The two larger slots are PCI-Express 3.0 x4 and are Key-M slots, while the smaller one is a Key-E slot for adding WiFi to the board. The top slot supports M.2 SSDs up to 80mm while the bottom slot goes up to 110 mm.
EVGA is using Realtek ALC1220 7.1 audio on this board with their Nu Audio application. You’ll notice the four large yellow audio capacitors on the board. These allow for higher impedance through the front panel audio header.
Finally we come to the rear I/O which is again is covered by that anodized piece of aluminum which has the says “EVGA” and “Z390 FTW” on it. So from left to right on the rear I/O we have a small clear CMOS button, combo PS/2 port, two USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.1 gen 2 ports (all type-A), two USB 3.1 gen 1 ports, Ethernet, and your audio connections. For those wondering EVGA is using the Intel i219V Gigabit NIC on this board.
