Z490 ITX Roundup, ASUS Strix vs MSI Unify vs Gigabyte Aorus Ultra
Up Close – ASUS ROG Strix Z490-I Gaming
The packaging for the Strix range is always familiar, blending the black and red looks of the ROG products with a giant rainbow take upon the ROG Eye. It shows how small the box is that barely any of that famous Strix iconography shows behind the product image.
As always with an ITX motherboard we can show you it all in one photograph. As is always the case on the ITX form factor the SATA ports are vertically mounted, but ASUS have still managed to squeeze in both Type-A and Type-C front panel USB ports between the ATX 24 pin and four SATA 6 Gbps ones.
The cooling setup on the Strix ITX is a stacked affair with active cooling. It’s always amazing to us how easily the manufacturers have overcome the inherent issues with a smaller form factor and how much technology is packed on to modern chipsets. All that performance needs power, which needs cooling, which is tough to do on such a tiny footprint. Impressive stuff.
As befits a smaller motherboard with smaller expectations of ultimate overclocks the Strix ITX has a single 8 pin CPU 12V power input. With a capacitor so close it’s worth taking extra care when installing your cable.
Above the north heatsink we find an RGB header for the AURA lighting ecosystem sitting alongside a pair of CPU fan headers for your AIO or twin-fan cooler.
The lower side of any ITX motherboard is always a little cramped and with such a beefy heatsink taming your M.2 drive temperatures it is especially the case on the Strix ITX. However, we still find enough cooling and RGB headers to keep your system both looking and being cool. You can also get a closer view of the USB and SATA ports we spoke of earlier, using up every last millimetre of the PCB.
The M.2 heatsink is extremely well designed as you can see from this neat row of capacitors. It matches up perfectly to the looks of the main power phase cooling. Whilst nobody would accuse the CPU area of being spread out, we think that this is an excellent testament to the careful design skills of the ASUS R&D department.
The amount of heatsink that has been squeezed onto the Z490-I footprint is pretty darn impressive. The power stage is 8+2 Infineon TDA21462 60A, with the Vcore using teamed parallel 8 phase, whilst the SOC covers the 2 parallel phases.
Lastly like you would expect from a ROG Strix product there are all the lighting options in full effect on the heatsink. We’ll give you one example here, although naturally your creativity is the only limiting factor.
