An ATX motherboard for Intel’s 10th-Generation “Comet Lake-S” processors, Asus’ Prime Z490-A sits apart from the company’s ubiquitous Republic of Gamers (ROG) family of components and has a wholly different, less edgy look and feel—one meant to attract a more professional audience with a cooler aesthetic. Priced at $229.99, it also undercuts some of Asus’ ROG boards. The Prime would work fine as the foundation for a new gaming PC, but this motherboard is also a fitting solution for shoppers who want to build or upgrade to a powerful productivity computer or a Core- rather than Xeon-based workstation.
The Board Design
The Prime Z490-A features a black PCB with white strips running across it. The rear I/O shield, as well as the chipset heatsink on this board, are also colored white. The bright, contrasting color on this otherwise dark component is eye-catching and draws your attention to these two areas on the board.
Other than that, the board isn’t particularly decorative. The rear I/O panel and chipset heatsink are plainly adorned and not much to look at. This changes when you power up the system and RGB LEDs embedded in these two items illuminate, but even then the Z490-A has to be one of the least flashy premium boards I’ve reviewed lately.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. Some people don’t want any extra flair inside their PCs, and I wouldn’t mind seeing a few more boards like this tastefully reserved platform in the high-end market.
Asus equips the Z490-A with a 12+2 DrMOS power design. The power-phase components are passively cooled by a trio of fairly large metal heatsinks that circle the LGA1200 CPU socket. These heatsinks sport a simple polished-metal finish. The shine adds to the board’s aesthetic and gives the PCB a high-quality, industrial look.
Storage support on this board consists of the usual six SATA 3.0 ports, along with two M.2 Key-M slots. One of these is hidden underneath a metal heat spreader to help keep any device you place here cool. The heat spreader is also lightly decorated with a few white accent stripes emblazoned over the same metal finish that we see on the other heatsinks.
A Brief Look at the Networking and Audio
In addition to the Key-M slots, the Prime Z490-A has a M.2 Key-E slot that can be used to add a wireless networking adapter, but it does not ship with Wi-Fi built into the board. It does feature a capable wired Ethernet controller, though. The Intel I225-V can support up to a 2.5Gbps Internet connection, which should be more than fast enough for the needs of most users.
Any techies want to take a guess what’s driving audio on this board? If you said Realtek’s S1220A, then congratulations, you’re right! Nowadays, the majority of premium motherboards I see make use of this Realtek chip, and it’s been that way for a while. Lower-end boards tend to use a wider selection of chips, but at the high end the Realtek S1220A audio codec is almost always what anchors the audio hardware. It’s hard to fault motherboard OEMs for this, either—the S1220A is known to provide a fairly high signal-to-noise ratio, and it works without any major known issues.
It’s a case of OEMs not fixing what isn’t broken. Nobody that wants a true Hi-Fi audio experience is going to settle for an integrated audio controller no matter how good it is. At the same time, a lot of people nowadays use S/PDIF or HDMI audio, both of which bypass the onboard DAC entirely. Overall, there isn’t much need for a better audio controller than the S1220A, and tossing money at a more expensive one would be just a waste of resources that could be better spent elsewhere. The audio-serious folks would just buy better dedicated hardware, anyway.
The Rear I/O Panel
The rear I/O panel on the Prime Z490-A is reasonably well stocked, with a total of seven USB Type-A ports. As most things connect through USB now, you can fairly well judge one of these panels based merely on the type and number of USB ports, and seven is a decent number.
Two of these ports are legacy USB 2.0 ports, suited for a keyboard and mouse. The remaining five are all USB 3.2 ports, two of which are Gen 1 and three Gen 2. An eighth USB port on the rear I/O panel is a Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port.
Directly below the USB ports is the usual set of five 3.5mm audio jacks, as well as an S/PDIF port. You can also find an RJ-45 Ethernet jack beside the lower USB ports, and at the top of the rear I/O panel are an HDMI port and a DisplayPort connector for video output. These last two are key in the event that you mean to rely in any way on the onboard Intel UHD Graphics of any of the 10th-Generation chips.
The Building Experience
Building up a system with the Prime Z490-A proved painless and straightforward. One of the biggest stressors when building any system is usually routing, stretching, and plugging in the CPU’s power cable, but that’s not a major problem here. The heatsinks covering the board’s VRMs are big, but they are spaced far enough away from the CPU power connector to make getting the plug in place easy and painless—well, about as easy and painless as it gets. Calling the job of plugging in a CPU power connector on any system “easy” would be a bit of an overstatement. But I’ve experienced far worse.
The CPU fan headers are a bit more problematic, but you’ll manage them. These two are offset from the VRM heatsinks to give you a small margin of clearance on all sides. If you use a water cooler with the radiator mounted at the top of your case, as I did for this build, then you will likely have the radiator partially obstructing your access to the fan headers. The experience here will vary widely, though, depending on your selection of CPU cooler and the dimensions of your particular chassis. In general, this placement of the headers is fairly common, and it’s not terribly difficult to get the fans plugged in, but the placement could be a little better.
There’s not much to say about plugging in video and add-on cards, as that’s essentially the same on every ATX motherboard, so let’s move on to storage. As mentioned above, you get two M.2 slots on this board. The lower of the two sits close to the right side of the board, directly below the chipset heatsink, which makes it relatively easy to access. PCI Express cards installed in the bottom two card slots shouldn’t get in the way of adding an M.2 device here. If you are going for a multi-GPU setup, however, you will need to remove any graphics cards installed in the middle PCIe x16 slot in order to reach the screw holes for the M.2 slot.
The upper M.2 slot is covered by a heat spreader that is held on by two screws. As this is set directly below the primary PCI Express x16 slot, accessing this M.2 slot will be impossible with any graphics card installed. This isn’t a flaw of the Prime Z490-A , as most motherboards that have M.2 slots place one of the slots here, nor does it prove to be a vexing issue in the long run. Just install your M.2 storage device before you build your system, and you’ll be fine.
A Brief Look at the BIOS
The Asus Prime Z490-A comes equipped with a version of Asus’ typical UEFI BIOS. Though a few things change from board to board, this BIOS should be readily familiar to anyone who has used a late-model Asus motherboard.
Upon first entering the BIOS, we are greeted by an EZ Mode menu, which is a little lacking in my opinion. It displays all the info you need about your system configuration, and it has controls for setting the memory profile and adjusting the boot order. The major feature I found missing here is an option for flashing the BIOS to a new version.
After entering the BIOS, you load into the Main tab, which displays core information on the motherboard itself, as well as the CPU and RAM. From here you can adjust the time and date, but that’s about it. The My Favorites tab is significantly more useful, as it can be customized to create your own one-stop shop of settings for all your UEFI BIOS needs. Essentially any option available throughout the BIOS can be replicated on this tab, a super-useful feature in general for inveterate tweakers.
If you don’t want to deal with the My Favorites tab, most BIOS functions can be adjusted through the Advanced tab. This tab is something of a catch-all for anything that doesn’t fit in one of the other predefined sections of the BIOS. It’s full of more functions than I could possibly discuss here without making this review a mile long to scroll through. The real enthusiast-minded fun is found in the AI Tweaker tab, so let’s discuss that instead.
The AI Tweaker tab houses all of the overclocking options on this board, with basic info shown at the top of this section. The main AI Tweaker page has few options, but you can activate the board’s auto-overclocking feature from here and set memory profiles. You will find a few more options, such as multicore enhancements, but the fine-tuned controls are in subfolders under this menu. This was done to try to give you a more organized overclocking experience, with items such as DRAM timings, VRM controls, and CPU overclocking tools all separated out into their own designated folders.
The Utility Software
After I got Windows 10 booted up, installing drivers for the Asus Prime Z490-A proved a straightforward and easy process. All of the drivers installed just fine without the need to perform Windows 10 updates first. For some odd reason, though, Asus includes drivers on its support page for this board for a Wi-Fi controller and a Bluetooth device, though this board doesn’t come with either of these preinstalled. Don’t bother downloading those when you go to set up one of these boards yourself.
The Z490-A doesn’t come with much in the way of software utilities, but the two that are here are useful. The first is Asus’ ArmouryCrate app. It has controls for any RGB LEDs that are connected to the system, and it can be used to check for driver updates.
The other application is a free copy of Daemon Tools Lite. Technically, this software is always free, but the public free version has ads, and the version included with the Prime Z490-A doesn’t, so that’s a plus. You will need to get Windows 10 updated before you will be able to install it, but once you do, you’ll find Daemon Tools Lite to be a relatively useful application that can virtually mount disc images. It can also rip images from physical discs to store backup copies, and you can pay to upgrade it to burn discs, as well, if you want to.
Verdict: A Solid Z490 Starter for the Mid-Road Shopper
Judging products positioned like the Prime Z490-A can be difficult. After testing the Prime Z490-A and building a system around it, I can’t find any complaints to make about the board. Everything works without issue, the BIOS is cleanly laid out and easy to use, and the overall feature set is competitive at its $229.99 price point. The board may look a little bland, with its lack of color, but some sober shoppers, weary of RGB excess, will find the monochrome look to be quite attractive and professional-looking.
In spite of all these positive aspects, the board feels just a few strokes short of stardom. Take Asrock’s Z490 Phantom Gaming Velocita, which is available for the same price and very competitive with the Prime Z490-A in terms of features. The Velocita has a substantially better thermal solution for the VRM heatsinks. It also has a second Ethernet jack and heat spreaders for both M.2 slots. The Prime Z490-A has advantages of its own, but if I had to choose between the two, I’d tip toward the Asrock. That’s not to say that the Asus won’t work perfectly fine as the main board in your new Intel LGA1200 PC, but it would be a more tempting solution if it were priced slightly lower.
