Review on GIGABYTE Z390 UD Intel Motherboard with Cryptocurrency Mining Support, 6 x PCIe Slots, SATA 6Gb/s, and above 4G Decoding by Moises Dzihic

I bought this for a new build based on Intel 9700K. I was a bit worried about the power consumption as some reviews said other brands struggle to deliver the performance of high-end 9th Gen processors. They said there would be no problems with it, although I prefer a different brand. I will do this review in reverse order. What you don't get: USB-C – While this is a chipset feature, it's just a port. If you really need USB-C, you'll have to buy an additional card from Gigabyte, which will surely make the price higher than the cost of the included board. I personally couldn't figure out why I need it. I don't have a USB-C device. Quality Audio - This board uses an older Realtek audio processor. I have absolutely no idea what that sounds like, I already had a Creative Pro Studio card so I disabled it immediately. If you think you want or need quality audio, you can look elsewhere. I personally don't think it's worth using any of Realtek's built-in solutions, but I listen to a lot of music on my PC and I'm a bit snob on that front, so you can ignore me. Connectors on the board for connecting the RGB tape. I use a case with a nice black aluminum side panel. I wasn't interested. In fact, I did my best not to buy RGB-lit components. There's a bright light that I think Gigabyte calls an "accent light" that provides a bit of illumination inside the case. The good news is that you seem to get everything else. The board is solidly built. It has metal supports around the GPU and memory slots to provide support. Sentient heatsinks are placed on power components and elsewhere. Really nothing to complain about. It's not flashy, your friends wouldn't be impressed if they saw it, but it seems to be of very high quality. The best I can think of to describe it is that it doesn't differ from the more expensive Gigabyte boards, except for the points I've already mentioned. I assume all critical components are the same until you get to their boards which cost four times as much. So if you're looking for full performance without all the flash, this might be for you. The $129 price tag certainly makes this a value, but only if you don't want or need the items above. They didn't skimp on the important things. It runs at 9700K on all/5.0 turbo with no voltage adjustment and up to 5.2 before my cooling solution started to strain a bit. It effectively ignored the 3.6GHz base clock and just let all cores run at the 4.8GHz base clock without user intervention. It makes sense, as long as you don't start increasing the voltage it really doesn't cause thermal consequences. All it really means is that, like the reviews I've read, this board has absolutely no power consumption issues with the high-end 9th Gen Intel processors. Actually there is only one con. I downloaded the gigabyte utility pack from their website. I'm tired of installing Google Chrome (which I don't usually use) and Norton Internet Security. Eventually I gave up and uninstalled their entire utility suite because each update tried to install crappy software. Sheet! Otherwise it is highly recommended. Higher-end board quality with no frills you might not need.