if you are looking for the best Z490 motherboard either in feature set or for
your money, than today we have nine different motherboards which I have thoroughly
tested over the last month and I'm happy to report to you that there's pretty
much good news for all these boards. Now of course when it comes to a comparison
between MSI, Asus, ASRock and Gigabyte who holds the crown when it comes to the
Z490 release let's go through the Z490 Taichi, Aorus Master, Plus TUF gaming
Wi-Fi, Maximus Formula XII, MEG ACE, Z490-E Strix ROG Gaming, Aorus Pro AX, PG Velocita Vs. Vision G. motherboards and first of all the price
let's pull this up here because these are the MSRP in US dollars and from
what I can check on you egg this is roughly what they are indeed coming out
over in the USA then when we look at the price comparison compared to
Australia this is important to note and it's going to be a big theme going out
of this video that is there is a pricing differential compared to PPP terms
to the US and that is it looks like gigabyte is edging out here so in other
words if you're in Australia the gigabyte boards are going to represent
the best value automatically based on better rates that gigabyte of selling
their motherboards in Australia for asrock is following close second here
and then a Zeus do need to fix up a little bit of their pricing in Australia
I feel especially the likes of the formula 12 which is coming almost double
that in dollar terms versus the US dollar 500 versus 980 so with that said
let's move over to the VRM the most important thing with a motherboard
especially in the likes of Z 490 where you're most likely going to go out and
buy a 10 900 K or an overclockable CPU and you want to make sure that it's
going to handle it at the very least out of the box and of course if you want to
put some water cooling on there you can extract some even higher overclock so
this is where I was happy to report out of the box all of these motherboards in
today's comparison did very well they did so with good power efficiency to the
Azurill PG velociter did win on both the overclocked and the stock results with
the power efficiency though the pro ax do a good job here as well where that
came in second place some of the other boards though it wasn't much of a
difference we're talking 10 20 watts at best out-of-the-box and both overclocked
though I will point out even though I felt the formula 12 had slightly ever
slightly the best PRM in today's comparison its power consumption did go
up because it's got so many extra features on board like a massive amount
of RGB as well as an oled readout so do keep in mind if you buy this board you
will be using more power even if you overclock to 5.2 yigit's there's pretty
much all the rest of the competitors in today's graph though another thing I
will point out here even though the temperatures look the lowest on the
tough gaming I did test this in lower ambience and even though I've dealt or
adjusted these results I feel like I've seen this over the last few years where
Delta adjusted results I feel aren't 100% accurate in that the cold of the
temperatures are I feel that they favor those that are tested under colder
conditions even after the Delta adjusting if that makes any sense if
someone studied thermodynamics and can tell me and validate what I'm saying
here and why I would love to read your thoughts on that but what it's worth
out-of-the-box if you're getting a 10 900k letting it boost a 4.9 gigahertz
old core you do not have to worry about any of these motherboards in the graph
and with that said it looks like the z4 90 tough gaming plus Wi-Fi is taking out
the best value if you just want to get a ten nine hundred K put it under some
water cooling or a big air cooler and then enjoy your CPU but what about the
overclocked results here's where we're moving in through that territory where a
bed of erm poor some of the best VRMs do matter and this is where the pro ax did
a really good job as well as the velocity even though the temperatures
got hot their power efficiency still remained very good in that even though
they got less phases for instance versus the Maximus formula 12 they did so with
a lower switching rate I feel which is represented in the temperatures and also
the power consumption so both these boards perform phenomenally well the
vision G was still able to take the 10 900 K to 5.2 gigahertz but it did need
more power and so it did start to lose a bit of power efficiency at these levels
the Z 490 tough gaming plus wasn't able to get the CPU to 5.2 gigahertz the vrm
just wasn't good enough but that being said we took
it to 5.1 gigahertz and it still did a good job and considering it's one of the
cheapest motherboards in today's comparison I think the vision Jian is
eight for ninety tough gaming are very well justified even at that all the rest
of the board's here in the comparison that this Trixie the Meg ace the RS Pro
X the master and the Tai Chi and the velociter all do the phenomenal job of
handling the 5.2 gigahertz ten nine hundred K overclock with great
power efficiency though now moving on to onboard audio if you guys want to get a
total solution and you want some of the best onboard audio then I feel like the
vision G did a pretty good job here as well as the velociter and the pro ax for
the money the Z for 180 tough gaming it did have
great crosstalk levels and it also had decent bass roll-off but it did have a
slight shake in the frequency response curve when we tested that so the onboard
audio on the TUF was decent though the rest of the boards in today's comparison
were good or very good in the case of the Maximus formula 12 that was
extremely good to the point where you could even use the mic in for
professional recordings versus the other solutions which did have either noise or
noise suppression being used on the mic import but in terms of the output the Z
490 tough gaming plus Wi-Fi was the only odd outlier here but even then it was
decent enough of course what about getting a high-speed nvme Drive and then
wanting that to be cooled by the included heat shields that these
motherboards offer and this is where all these boards here did a great job of
cooling down um to drive you can see that versus the no heat shield option
which does take the nvme to very high temperatures which if you're using it
for prolonged times could invert some throttling on that drive so basically
they're all fine make sure that if you want to use more than one m2 at high
speeds make sure that the board you're looking at has two of these m2 heat
shields or you may wish to install one yourself but if you're just using a
single nvme driving at n900 k then all boards are going to do an absolutely
fine job there with all those temperatures and results out of the way
it's now time to talk about my experience with the boards and the
feature sets included which I feel if you're buying boards especially at this
price range you want to get a good feature set that matches what you need
so out of the four boards I'm gonna point out a zoo sand as rock because
they've got features that I like and it depends on who you are
Azusa have there AI features which you got the AI overclocking they've also got
the AI cooling which you can control both of those in the bios then they've
got the AI networking so if you're on a congested network it can handle your
packets and prioritize gaming packets I have tested this out on their routers in
the past and it has worked phenomenally well as rocked on the other hand they do
have their RGB control built into the BIOS and for me personally this is why I
would be picking an AZ rock board out of the Z 490 lineup even though the pro ax
is going to win in terms of total value in today's comparison we'll get onto
that later the internet update in the bias as well is also an extremely handy
to have feature so the other three boards from gigabyte MSI and a Zeus they
all have their software based RGB control but I feel like Azrael
definitely do get the nod for having that RGB control on the bios and it can
affect performance if you've got the software on in Windows as I've been
chucked in the past don't terms of the BIOS itself from all these four
companies in the years of use of that BIOS I feel like all four companies have
done a very good job however I did find a slight problem in the vision Jie it's
nothing that you can't work around and same with the C 490 tough gaming when I
did those individual reviews I'll put the links to those reviews up here and
also in the description for all the boards that I've done dedicated reviews
for but for what it's worth none of these motherboards in today's comparison
had any glaringly wrong problems that would detract me from buying it was just
some little problems that you may come into and they're easily solved in the
case of the vision G and the Z for naughty tough gaming of course the last
thing to talk about is how many PWM fan headers these boards have how many USB
ports they have if they have included Wi-Fi 6 or Bluetooth 5 now you can check
this out on the individual websites on the spec sheets on the boards themselves
though generally with Z 490 the more money you spend the more USB ports
you're gonna get on the back you're gonna get Wi-Fi 6 included Bluetooth 5
and more addressable RGB and PWM fan headers though with all that out of the
way it's finally time to give you guys a clear-cut recommendation on these boards
and as I alluded to in the intro with the price differences between
Australia and the US if you can find any one of these boards around their price
point on sale then I would definitely go with the one on sale because there
really wasn't anything that would wholeheartedly stop me from buying any
one of these bullets in today's comparison now if the board isn't in
today's comparison it means that I haven't tested it so I cannot give you a
recommendation on that board I have heard some bad things about some
of the real entry-level as rock and gigabyte boards so you may wish to check
out individual reviews of those before it's worth awards for value it's gonna
go for the z4 90-plus tough gaming Wi-Fi this board comes in with Wi-Fi six
Bluetooth five you've got a really good vrm for the $200 price point and if you
don't need the Wi-Fi you can save twenty bucks but the board performed
phenomenally well throughout all the tests and the ten 900k was able to get
to 5.1 gigahertz now the onboard audio was decent but at this price point if
you want to get a Z 490 motherboard that's going to do it all then this is a
well justified board for the money so with that aside the Z 490 tough gaming
Wi-Fi definitely gets the award for value having Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5 and
also having a easy to use bios overclocking quite well and giving you
good vrm temperatures I felt like the board really hit hard for the money and
if you don't need the Wi-Fi 6 then you can get it for $20 cheaper at 180 USD
and it can still handle the 10 900k absolutely fine now in terms of the
vision G that board the aesthetics on that easily wins out I thought it was
one of the best-looking boards in today's comparison even despite it
having a typo which dad man pointed out in the review and he sort of made a
little joke about it but other than that I'd say the $200 Vision G at 5.2
gigahertz it did start to struggle in power efficiency so out of the box the Z
490 tough gaming Wi-Fi did very well but the vision G had slightly better onboard
audio so if you're going for the onboard audio option with no Wi-Fi you might
want to go with that choice around $200 though is stepping up now to the
mid-range $250 around this area I feel like this is personally where it is
if you want to get a ten 900k and you just want that bit extra because these
options all had phenomenal onboard audio and they also had phenomenal power
efficiency and they had that bump up on the vrm quality the pro ax objectively
wins out in today's video i'm gonna call it the number-one board out of all these
nine motherboards I've tested here I feel like it's a premium board at a
mid-range price within the Z 490 realm where you're getting a phenomenal vrm
you're getting that Wi-Fi six Bluetooth five really good onboard audio and
everything worked out in terms of compatibility and overclocking was a
breeze though the velociter PG gaming even though it had these little fans on
board its power efficiency was the best when overclocked in today's comparison
and even out of the box as rock have done a great job on the switching rates
on the vrm to balance the temperatures and give you really good wattage and
power consumption whilst you're overclocking and of course with those
fans on board it's going to keep the vrm heatsink quite cool so I feel like as
rock have done a phenomenal job there and I would be personally picking this
board because of the polychrome RGB built into the BIOS in the ISA views
with internet flash if I need to update my boss now one more thing though it
doesn't come included with Wi-Fi 6 or Bluetooth 5 so that might be a
deal-breaker for you and also with the onboard audio you want to keep it at a
volume level at 90 or below other than that though both these boards score out
in the boards to get in my opinion then of course going up to the top of the
pack we had the e Strix rog gaming which if you want to go with the Zeus's
premium value option then that's going to offer everything that these other two
boards that we just talked about did but it's going to come at a slight premium
over the other two boards then we're going up to the Meg ace that did a
phenomenal job but it didn't really stand out to me personally because it
didn't really offer anything over what the other options had this is a very
similar story with the taichi the Auris master and also the maximus formula 12
however the maximus formula does have an integrated 10g Nick which did offer an
absolutely gorgeous aesthetic and at the same time offered the option to insert
water cooling into the vrm heatsink as well as having an OLED display readout
but that does come at a cost of slightly extra
power consumption first the other boards in today's comparison and with all that
out of the way I hope you guys enjoyed today's Z 490 roundup and comparison if
you did then be sure to hit that like button for us and also if you've got any
questions or comments about any of the Z 490 boards please leave a comment in the
comment section below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can and then with
that aside we got the question of the day which comes from mad cat
four-five-six and they asked wait you can wash Ram
with water so they're referring to our Kenya's fix-it episode which we did up
with a link up here where we did wash some faulty ddr3 memory and it did end
up working out in the end make sure if you wash computer parts
with regular tap water please be sure to clean all the water off before you run
any current through it but also at the same time I like to put some
multi-purpose spray or wd-40 on to protect it and make sure it doesn't
corrode over time hope that answers that question and I'll
catch you guys in another tech video very soon if you stayed this far and
you're enjoying that content be sure to smash that sub button ring that bell on
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peace out for now bye
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