Intel Z390 Chipset Product Brief and Block Diagram posted

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 05/14/2018 08:32 AM | source: | 20 comment(s)

Intel on its website has published a page on the Z390 chipset, including a chipset block diagram showing all connections. Z390 will support all Coffee Lake generation desktop processors but would also be compatible for the next-generation.

Z390 has been discussed a lot, it should be a chipset intended for 8-core Coffee Lake CPUs, but these are not expected to launch anytime soon. Z390 will get an LGA1151 socket using the traditional DMI 3.0 chipset-bus (which basically is an x4 PCIe link lane up/downlink. Similar to the Z370 chipset, it'll have 24 PCI-Express gen 3.0 lanes. Also similar is storage at six SATA 6 Gbps ports with AHCI and RAID support; and up to three 32 Gbps M.2/U.2 connectors. LAN remains the same as well. 1 GbE, Intel recommends their Wireless-AC 9560 card for the motherboard manufacturers to pair this chipset with for 802.11ac and Bluetooth 5. Some differences are spotted though, USB is configured at six 10 Gbps USB 3.1 gen 2 ports, ten 5 Gbps USB 3.1 gen 1 ports.

All in all, there are very little changes, other than new CPU support. You can find more info here.

Above Intel Z390

Above (for comparison) Z370

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Prometheus336
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#5546494 Posted on: 05/14/2018 08:27 AM

still ddr4 and just 24 pcie lanes, I can't say I'm not disappointed

HardwareCaps
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#5546498 Posted on: 05/14/2018 08:36 AM

still ddr4 and just 24 pcie lanes, I can't say I'm not disappointed

I'm really interested to why people need so many PCIE lanes, I mean SLI and crossfire are dead basically. we have m.2 now and SATA SSDs are plenty fast. please help me understand

BlueRay
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#5546504 Posted on: 05/14/2018 08:53 AM

I'm really interested to why people need so many PCIE lanes, I mean SLI and crossfire are dead basically. we have m.2 now and SATA SSDs are plenty fast. please help me understand

I suppose some people use many add on cards like sound and network cards along with 2 GPUs?

HardwareCaps
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#5546508 Posted on: 05/14/2018 09:13 AM

I suppose some people use many add on cards like sound and network cards along with 2 GPUs?

On a side note: from experience, external dacs are way better in terms of quality and comfort than internal audio cards.
OK, that sounds like it is 1% of the PC market maybe even less...maybe if you need several network cards but again that's server territory not consumers

Prometheus336
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#5546521 Posted on: 05/14/2018 10:51 AM

I'm really interested to why people need so many PCIE lanes, I mean SLI and crossfire are dead basically. we have m.2 now and SATA SSDs are plenty fast. please help me understand

Well my biggest concern is to have 16+4+4 which will mean that I will be able to add just 2 m.2 drives. I also don't need to add network cards, and I use an external usb sound card.
Sli-wise speaking, yeah for me personally it doesn't really change a lot, but I have a couple of friends that are into video editing and rendering which would be really glad to go for a z390 system instead of paying the premium for the "professional tier" intel has to offer, because they are starting and they have a lot of expenses besides their PCs.
Ofc, you can argue that they can go for ryzen, but considering the RAM prices and how well scales AMD with faster RAMs, the price at the end is almost the same, with a slight advantage in performance for intel CPUs.

HardwareCaps
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#5546526 Posted on: 05/14/2018 11:11 AM

Prometheus336
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#5546528 Posted on: 05/14/2018 11:22 AM

I'm just amazed, even Z370 has X2 PCIE 16 for SLI and 4-5 extra PCIE slots, that's a lot!
I get that going for professional tier hardware is far more expensive but that sounds professional enough for me... you can't complain about that...

sorry but z370 has 24 pcie lanes as this one, for a 3 x16, you would need 48 pcie lanes. If there is the slot doesn't mean it will work at full speed.

About needing 2 cards for content creation etc. I admit I don't know if an x8 slot, will slow down the rendering as it slows down (by just a couple of frames) for games.

stefpats
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#5546529 Posted on: 05/14/2018 11:33 AM

I'm really interested to why people need so many PCIE lanes, I mean SLI and crossfire are dead basically. we have m.2 now and SATA SSDs are plenty fast. please help me understand

Well i ll tell you my situation and u decide.I have 2 ssds,2 hdds for backups,one GFX gard,one sound card,one usb pcie card,and need two more SATA for optical bluray drive and one for the removable rack of my case since i use it with other hdd.So do you still think they re enough?I have Z370 and often i have to unplug things to plug other things.No they re not enough if you re at enthusiast level of hardware.

HardwareCaps
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#5546530 Posted on: 05/14/2018 11:33 AM

sorry but z370 has 24 pcie lanes as this one, for a 3 x16, you would need 48 pcie lanes. If there is the slot doesn't mean it will work at full speed.

About needing 2 cards for content creation etc. I admit I don't know if an x8 slot, will slow down the rendering as it slows down (by just a couple of frames) for games.
The difference in performance between gen 3 x8 and x16 is minimal for GPUs gaming or not. 2 high-end GPUs is enough for any kind of video rendering.. the rest could be used for nice quick storage which again is enough unless you're getting like the ridiculous 2GB/s PCIE ones which are aimed at professional platforms anyways.... I just don't get it.

user1
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#5546531 Posted on: 05/14/2018 11:33 AM

I'm just amazed, even Z370 has X2 PCIE 16 for SLI and 4-5 extra PCIE slots, that's a lot!
I get that going for professional tier hardware is far more expensive but that sounds professional enough for me... you can't complain about that...

its not as amazing as it seems when you realise all 24 lanes together have a max bandwidth of pcie3.0x4 to the cpu (dmi 3.0), the chipset acts like a big pcie switch, great for plugging in lots of peripherals though.

HardwareCaps
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#5546533 Posted on: 05/14/2018 11:36 AM

its not as amazing as it seems when you realise all 24 lanes together have a max bandwidth of pcie3.0x4 to the cpu (dmi 3.0), the chipset acts like a big pcie switch, great for plugging in lots of peripherals though.

ya but that's enough for 99% of the users... how many are actually using several PCIE SSDs with SLI configurations? almost none and they should get a professional hardware for that kind of thing...

386SX
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#5546534 Posted on: 05/14/2018 11:38 AM

So basically Z390 is Z370 with USB Port Disable, new Intel ME firmware and the OPTIONAL option of WLAN a/c? Well ... I was able to disable specific ports even on X79/C600, the Intel ME firmware is useless for most users I guess, and judging from >Z<390 it will be a 1,5 MB version anyway, so no remote features and for about 10 bucks you get a decent WLAN chip, for 30something with 833MBit+.

So why should a user upgrade to this platform?

HardwareCaps
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#5546537 Posted on: 05/14/2018 11:46 AM

wait the Z370 has 6 SATA 3's with 1-2 M.2 slots... how is that not enough for you?

user1
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#5546543 Posted on: 05/14/2018 12:05 PM

ya but that's enough for 99% of the users... how many are actually using several PCIE SSDs with SLI configurations? almost none and they should get a professional hardware for that kind of thing...

Not many, m.2 raid is becoming more popular as high speed drive prices come down, definitely something to keep in mind if your an enthusiast.

schmidtbag
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#5546600 Posted on: 05/14/2018 03:15 PM

I'm really interested to why people need so many PCIE lanes, I mean SLI and crossfire are dead basically. we have m.2 now and SATA SSDs are plenty fast. please help me understand

M.2 alone is a reason why people want more PCIe lanes, seeing as it can use 4 of them. But, overall, I'm inclined to agree - most people really don't need more. That being said, I personally find full-size ATX boards for sockets AM4 and 1151 to be mostly pointless. mATX boards can offer pretty much everything you need on these platforms. The average home-built PC nowadays only has maybe 1 other expansion card other than a GPU, and a lot of the time that would be a wifi adapter. I'd much rather motherboards come with a M.2 E-keyed slot with only one or two PCIe lanes for things like Wifi.
If someone really wanted the extra full-size PCIe slots, there are cheap M.2 to PCIe converters out there. Get a cheap riser cable and you can make an mATX board emulate a full ATX.

Anyway... considering these are high-end boards, I still feel they should have at least 8 more PCIe lanes, so the primary x16 can run at full bandwidth. I don't think that's too much to ask.

ya but that's enough for 99% of the users... how many are actually using several PCIE SSDs with SLI configurations? almost none and they should get a professional hardware for that kind of thing...

Except 99% of users aren't buying boards like these; Z chipset boards are more for enthusiasts.

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