ASROCK Z790 Z790 PG LIGHTNING, 4 X DDR5, HDMI, EDP, 4 M.2, 4 SATA

Product Information

For expansion, it comes with 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for your graphics card, 1 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, and 2 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. It’s aimed and targeted at the mainstream user who’s after an affordable Z790 motherboard without compromising on performance. Meanwhile, its count of seven Type-A USB ports on the rear I/O panel are enough for most people’s needs, and six of them are USB 3 or faster. You even get a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C port here too. Sadly, the Type-C front panel header is limited to USB 3 specifications and there’s no Wi-Fi, but all of the M.2 ports support PCI-E 4 and you get four SATA 6Gbps ports as well as 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet.

USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C (Rear), 1 USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A (Rear), 1 USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C (Front), 9 USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A (5 Rear, 4 Front), 3 USB 2.0 (1 Rear, 2 Front) It features a pretty decent 16+1+1 VRM design with SPS for Vcore+GT, and an 8 layer PCB, Dr.MOS and hi-density power connnectors. Starting in the upper-left corner of the board, we get a better look at the large, purple-and-white VRM heatsink and the graffiti-style appearance. The VRM heatsinks have a lot of mass and a fair amount of surface area, so they should do a decent job on the MOSFETs below, but we’ll see how well that pans out in or testing below. Just above the left VRM heatsink are two 8-pin EPS connectors (one required) to power the CPU. The Z790 chipset allows a total 20 usable PCIE 4.0 lanes, with upto a maximum memory capacity of 128GB. It’s also capable of up to 10 x USB 3.2 Gen1 5Gbps, 10 x USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps and up to 5 x USB 3.2 Gen2x2 20Gbps. Intel® UHD Graphics Built-in Visuals and the VGA outputs can be supported only with processors which are GPU integrated.Across the bottom of the board are several exposed headers. You’ll find the usual, including additional USB ports, RGB headers, and power/reset buttons. Below is a complete list from left to right. On the bottom of the board, starting on the left side, we spy the dated Realtek ALC897 audio codec. There’s an audio separation line, but you can forget about third-party DACs and Amps at this price point. The ALC897 is a budget codec, so discerning listeners, even content creators this is intended for, might be disappointed and want to use a superior external audio solution.