Z490 Phantom Gaming 4 vs MSI Z490-A PRO

I've narrowed to those two motherboards, they both cost about the same on eBay and have similar specs. I find the MSI a bit better because the extra M2 (key M) port, but I don't really have much experience on motherboards. which one is better and why? or if you think there is another better option for around the same price, please let me know.

I look for minimum:

• Support for Intel 10th series
• 6 sata III ports
• 3 PCIe x1 ports
• Works fine with the RTX 3080 (I guess 1 PCIe 3.0 x16 port should be enough?)

 

I've played with the Z370/Z390 versions and they're both good boards.

I'm currently running a Z390M Pro4 and it's up to the task.

I look for more PCI slots though initially with multiple cards for various things like dual 4 port GigE, DVR, WIFI, GPU

One board I had I picked for Dual GPU + the other cards for 7 slots IIRC on it

Depends really on what you want to fill those slots with... you can always make more SATA / M.2 slots with HBA's and expand beyond what's on the board itself. The boards though if you add a 2nd M.2 will disable 2 of those ports due to bandwidth restrictions on the bus. That's where the HBA cards come into play. You can get a 5-6 port SATA HBA for ~$40 on Amazon and throw it into the PCI slot and bypass the PCH bottleneck which is a good idea if you're running SSD's instead of spinners.

It also kind of depends on the case format you're looking at as well. If it's ATX you can get more options than say mATX or ITX.

Figure out what you need and add in some future proofing for extra slots if you decide to expand things beyond say the 6 drives or adding a 2nd GPU... which plays into the PSU requirements as well since GPU's are a power hog and require you to spend $$$ on bigger PSU's.

If it's a toss between MSI / ASRock though just pick the cheaper of the two. They both work fine. Save your cash for things like an HBA for speedier drive times if you plan to NAS or a M.2 Adapter card if you want to Raid. If you want to use the 2nd M.2 there's a 5 port SATA card you can put into that.

Tons of options if you let your mind wander a bit into all of the options out there of what your box can potentially do.

 

Checked if the boards you look after is 4.0 ready? Not that this is important for Ampere but I would still want this support on a board also intended for Rocket lake.

 

You have made good points there. I have an ATX case which holds 7 slots. The graphic card will take 2 slots, so it would be nice a MB with 5 PCIe ports, as you said they are very handy. I'm planning to add more SATA ports through PCIe cards, the bad thing is the case has it's limitations on the amount of 3.5 HDD that can hold. The case I bought can hold 4 3.5 HDD and if I replace the 2 5.25 slots with an adapter I can get 3 more 3.5 slots but that should do for a couple of years. As sexy as SSD are they are still expensive compared to HDD, so I'm just going to use one fast M2 SSD for OS and apps and slow HDD for saving the rest of stuff.

I'm definitely not getting more multi-GPU systems until I see that there is actual support from game developers which at the moment seems unlikely. I'd say I discard the dual GPU setup for this gen, maybe in a couple of year dual GPU would be a thing again, but at that time I'm going to probably update the MB to get the newer CPU, faster RAMs, etc. For the PSU I got the EVGA supernova 750W P2, which should do fine at stock clocks on GPU and CPU. For CPU I'm thinking on a 10700K, seems good price wise. The 10900K is a bit expensive for my needs which are mostly play games.

These MB are in fact PCIe 3.0, I couldn't find Intel chipset based MB that support PCIe 4.0. I think I'd have to move to AMD if I want PCIe 4.0. How long you think would be until we start to see Rocket Lake? I'm assuming then that Rocket Lake would most likely to need a MB upgrade then?

 

I wouldn't touch an ASRock board with the proverbial 10-foot pole due to their poor VRM design and performance.

 

Asus with many of their Z490 motherboards have been engineered with PCIe 4.0 readiness. And probably other brands boards. No need to have to wait for for Rocket lake and new chipset for this feature(expected early spring 2021). I would take a look on Asus or Gigabyte boards.

Edit.
See also http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ers-welcome-too.810490/page-818#post-11043930

https://itigic.com/all-compatible-models-of-z490-boards-with-pcie-4-0/

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/h3MTwP,8XNgXL/

Based on the options / future proofing side by side I would go AsRock for the dual NVME slots + wifi NGFF slot.. .they may come in handy down the road.

PCI4 would be a good investment as well but, it might mean a delay in putting things together due to the boards not being released yet for Intel... though in the past with 8/9th gen chips the 370's got a firmware upgrade later on to enable 9th gen chips but, the chipset upgrade from 370 to 390 had some value for some native features when it comes to data transfer.

However PCI4 / USB4 / TB4 may not be a high on the checklist item for a couple of years at a minimum if you're not into bleeding edge technology. Supposedly these items should be released for sale in the next month or two in time for the holidays. Most of these are listed as options starting with Tiger Lake which would bump up your processor to the next gen from where you're scoping things out which isn't that big of a cost jump.

As to the # of drives... I have a Node 804 which holds 8 x 3.5's in mounting brackets + 2 more slots on the bottom of the case to mount more + slots in the front cover for 2 x 2.5" drives and 10 fan positions if you stick to the 8 native mounts. The only downside might be the mATX size of the case but, with a single GPU and minimal addit

 

Tiger Lake is the 11th gen Intel Core mobile processors. With Z490 we talk about Comet and Rocket lake. Coming Z590 will be Rocket only. All desktop chipset. Not mobile. and be you sure.. Many of those Z490 boards will get PCIe 4.0 firmware.

 

So based on that list the MSI Z490-A PRO is capable of PCIe 4.0, though if I check the specs on MSI website it says it supports PCIe 3.0. That means that at some point with a simple firmware update the MB is going to be able to support PCIe 4.0? or MSI is going to release a version 2 of the same MB? I'm a bit confused.

Wait why you say that the Asrock supports dual NVMe? I think the MSI model has dual M2 port, or am I reading something wrong? and yeah the NGFF is a nice feature, though at the moment the desktop PC is going to be wired to the LAN. Oh man I've seen so many ports for Wi-Fi cards, mini PCIe, M2, etc.. that I'm not sure how future proof the NGFF port is, at the end of the day I think I'd take an extra PCIe port.

About the case I already bought a cheap corsair ATX case, the case you own looks pretty nice though. Can you put a standard ATX PSU on it?

 

@ Tyranus07

My bad.. Somehow the side by side was showing a different board. It looks like they both have the 2 M.2 + 1 NGFF available.

NGFF is the same form factor the AX200 cards are using whether stand alone add to the mobo or use an adapter to put them in a PCI slot. It will likely be in use for a few years.

The Node does fit a full ATX PSU... the limitations would be in fitting more than 1 GPU if you needed additional PCI slots for other cards but, if you wanted to fit dual GPU's you could you just wouldn't have expansion room for anything else w/o removing 1 of them. I have an EVGA 850 in it right now though for the PSU from when I was playing around with dual GPU's in a different case along with all of the other stuff I had crammed into it.

As to the PCI4... they already have the schematics / requirements for the specification built onto the boards and just need to enable it with a BIOS update. At least that's how they did the Gen 9 on the 370's vs buying a new 390.

 

Put it this way. PCIe 4.0 support only for coming Z590 boards (who will support 1 single gen Intel chips) would be too stupid. Alder lake will come late 2021/02 with new Socket.

PCIe 4.0 is here already for Intel's new Mobile crap. And AMD is soon out with new chips with second round PCIe 4.0 support. + Intel is on the block with PCIe 4.0 ssd's. Should Intel be so stupid that they hamper the MB manufacturers from not offer PCIe 4.0 supported firmware on older Z490 bords? This would be the same as shoot themself in the head with a big gun.

None of the MB manufacturers will confirm all details about PCIe 4.0 support for own Z490 boards before they are forced by their competitors or get approval from Intel to do it. PCIe 4.0 support can be done with firmware update as long the MB manufacturer have made the MB ready for it. No need for version 2 of the same MB.

Edit. See also... http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ers-welcome-too.810490/page-784#post-11007640

 

Some more info for you....
Intel Rocket Lake-S 11th Gen Desktop CPUs Reportedly Cleared For March 2021 Liftoff hothardware.com | Today

A new report from Videocardz is now alleging that the first Rocket Lake-S processors will arrive in March 2021, which is a little earlier in the year than when Comet Lake-S launched during 2020. Rocket Lake-S processors will allegedly use the LGA-1200 socket that was first introduced with Comet Lake-S and will be pin-compatible with 400-Series motherboards like the Z490. In addition, some Z490 motherboards that were already PCIe 4.0-ready will be able to fully unlock this functionality with a Rocket Lake-S processor onboard.

Intel-rocket-lake-s-500-series-motherboards-roadmap-leaked videocardz.com

 

That's pretty nice so the Z490-A Pro should be good enough for at least two or three years. Though it seems that Rocket Lake-S is the real deal with new features such as TB4 and PCIe 4.0. I'm a bit disappointed that TB4 will have the same bandwidth as TB3 though, specially thinking on eGPUs for laptops.

 

So I finally got none of these boards, lol. I got the Gigabyte Vision G.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z490-VISION-G-rev-1x#kf

The braking point to me was, that most of boards disable two or three SATA III ports when M.2 PCIe ports are being used. The Vision G seems to not have such issue, plus it has an extra CPU x8 lanes PCIe port, and none of the other boards had another PCIe with CPU lanes. Most MB on the same price range have only one x16 CPU lanes port and the rest are PCH lanes based ports.

 

When you fill all the M2 slots the next thing you do is pick up a HBA with 6 SATA ports ( $35) on it or go the LSI route and pick up a mini-sas card that can do up to 8+ drives.

It's sensible to pick a MOBO though that has 2 Drive M2 and 1 WIFI slot which you did.

The whole PCI lane issue is a PITA on consumer boards if you load it up w/ more than 1 GPU and are somehow able to saturate the bandwidth. In most cases though you won't be able to anyway.

Congrats though on making a decision that works for you.

 

This MB sadly doesn't have a M.2 Key E slot for WiFi cards. So I had tu put in to a balance in one side: M.2 key E slot, 6 system fan connectors (only 3 for the Vision G), optical audio output, aesthetics, 1 extra USB 3.2 gen2x2 type-c - versus on the other side: an extra x8 lanes CPU PCIe port, 6 SATA III + 2 M.2 (all working at the same time), two more USB 3.2 gen 2... Is hard when you're on a budget, but then I decided to go with more functional stuff to me. The PC will most likely be using the 2.5 Gbps ethernet port, and I will be using the all 6 SATA III ports (I have 4 already in use), and maybe I'll use the extra PCIe port for a PCIe 4.0 ultra fast SSD (in the future)... So I went with things that are more useful to me in the near future.

 

It's a balancing act for sure on which functions mean more to you.

I've rebuilt my system several times already between 3 mobo's / cases already.

If there's an expansion issue there's always a solution to it. I've considered the 2x2 cards as well but instead opted to just go 5Gbps ethernet which provides options outside of a single use like AP's w/ 2.5gbps ports for higher throughput over wifi. Sometimes the options we desire are overkill for what can actually be done w/o putting up a big stack of cash to accomplish things we want.

I have a radi10 setup with spinners and it pushes 400MB/s which is 3.5gbps so, speed testing your media before deciding on networking / USB makes sense to save some cash until you do an overhaul or expand to 3 sets which would bump to 600MB/s which then comes closer to saturating the 5gbps link vs the 20gbps USB controller @ 2x2. If you want ultra speed you would need to be using NVME's on both sides with a 2x2 enclosure which there are a couple of now
Orico // IOCrest for around $60... with a 2x1 I can get 600-800MB/s but internally hit over 1GB/s up to 1.5GB/s.... so, there's some overhead that throttles things a bit more than what's promised on the advertising descriptions.

When you go down the rabbit hole and swap things out it's easy to resell the parts as you upgrade things...just usually not for the same price you paid. I've been able to recoup quite a bit along the way and tend to offset some of the initial costs with CC sign up bonuses. The 5G / WIFI 6 upgrade I just did got discounted with a $150 form the bank for spending $500. 30% is a good discount when there's not much variance in pricing on newer gear.