ASUS Prime Z390-A Motherboard LGA1151 ATX

4 of my last 5 builds were Asus MB with a combination of ROG graphic cards etc

At the beginning of the year, I decided to give the Gigabyte AORUS Ultra a try to absolutely regret it…
The x16 slot was defective, it was making a lot of weird behaviors AND the BIOS is highly crappy and cheap with bugs. Their overclocking guide is MEDIOCRE (doesn’t work until extra tweaking) and to ice the cake, their customer support = CRAP. No cross-shipping for a defective MB I rely on for my business… Advice like “Don’t use the defective x16 port, just use the integrated graphic port” ??? Seriously?? Man….
GIGABYTE = pure bottom we-dont-care-about-our-customer business.

It all brought me back to ASUS where their BIOS is just plain simple BRILLIANT! My PC with all the other same components is just breaking score on all default. ASUS is simply AMAZING and I’m glad that I can say: as long as you guys keep the same pace and quality, it’s going to be ASUS FOR LIFE for me <3
REAL COMPUTING, REAL TECH, PURE QUALITY.

Installation was easy most of the time. I do wish that the instruction book had a little larger pictures of where some of the pins from the case went. These are the wires for on and off as well as sound and SSD lights. I used a magnifying glass and got it done without any problems. This MB is stable and will take the latest i9 chips. There were no instructions on how to install the new V-NAND SSD. If you look carefully there is a small package with two screws (not with the bigger package of screws) and two screw in spacers. I went to u-tube to see how the SSD gets inserted and didn’t realize at first that the spacer was necessary before the screw to hold it in place could be used. Since the MB will hold only one V-NAND SSD and there are two sets of mounting screws, this was a little confusing. Total performance is great.

This has treated me so well so far. Installation was incredibly easy, all pins and ports are well labeled on the motherboard itself and the guide was also very easy to look through for any clarification. The RGB on it is so satisfying. My only complaint is that the Asus Aura program won’t download on my computer, but that is apart from the motherboard itself and I wouldn’t even factor that in to my review of this motherboard. I’m running an i7 with an AIO cooler attached to it and the installation for that was easy as well.

The only considerations I might mention is that if you are building in a mid size tower you may run into some spacing problems with the additional side heat sink where the main RGB also sits. When installing my radiator I was unable to make it sit fully flush with the screw brackets as the pop out on the motherboard is a couple mm too far out for my case. If you are mounting vertically on the front fans or have a large/longer case I doubt this will be a problem for you. Everything else has worked wonderfully, easy installation for the GPU and RAM. The six full SATA ports have also been really great. No issues in terms of heat, though I am running 8 fans in an airflow case so that may not be indicative depending on how you choose to vent and manage temp.

Absolutely recommend, solid middle of the line board price wise, performance has been nothing but my best expectations thus far.

There were no reviews on this, so I felt like I was taking a bit of a risk, but considering the ASUS Z370-A MB was popular in reviews, I went for the Z390 Prime-A. I am glad I did. I am not a gamer, I work with DAWs and rendering video. I loaded it up with the i7-8700k and 16GB of G.Skill RAM, and the first boot (which I expected to be a disaster) ended up working flawlessly. I didn’t expect it to have AURA RGB lighting, that was a fun surprise, but so far it is living up to all of its product description without any problems. The only trouble I ran into was installing drivers. For some reason, the included ASUS DVD would not let me install LAN or audio drivers, I had to find those driver directories on the DVD-ROM and install them by clicking “run as administrator.”

I went with ASUS because their BIOS gives you complete control over your PC by letting you change anything you want. It has an excellent GUI whether you aren’t sure what you are doing, or you are an advanced user. The overclocking software and fan control software are very easy to use, and probably the best (and safest) way to learn how to control your PC hardware.

UPDATE – 1 year later

I recently damaged this motherboard, and had to replace it. I looked through ASUS’ other products, and determined, this was still the BEST choice for my needs and ended up replacing it with this exact one. It has tons of USB 3.0 and 3.1 ports, I have had no hassle with any of its features, except for the sound. I use 2 Mackie powered monitors for speakers, and I have a 1/8 stereo –> 2 RCA Y cable going into them. I would continually get buzzing noise interference from the GPU through the speakers. Replacing the GPU made no difference. Replacing the motherboard also makes no difference. If you end up with this problem, here is the fix: Buy a Ground Loop Noise Isolator (for car stereos) for $8 on Amazon. It may be a defect, or it might just be the wiring in my house, but if the ASUS folks are paying attention, you should build these into your systems!

The AI Suite Software turned out to be ridiculously dense – full of options and features to control your case fans and CPU cooler, OC your CPU (and GPU if it’s an ASUS make), conserve power when you don’t really need all the speed, and it will even call up OC settings when you open specific apps. This should be a much bigger selling point than it appears to be.

Other quirks – The RGB is 12V only! If you end up getting something with a 3 pin connector, or Addressable RGB, I found this amazing adapter if you search: DeepCool RGB Converter ($15) and you can plug other RGB devices in don’t work with Aura, and it will let you use them with your RGB headers on this motherboard. The 3 orange fans in the attached photo are “addressable RGB” fans that aren’t compatible with Aura, but are now controlled by Aura.

This is probably the best motherboard when it comes to people like me who do a lot of work with DAWs, Video editing, and occassional gaming with one GPU. Apparently if you use the other PCIE port, it only runs at 8x native instead of 16x. This is fine if you’re not trying to reap all the performance you can out of 2 video cards.

It is also nice to have an upgrade path for the day I want to beef up my system in the future. I’m already making my plans for a X-series processor when they’re “old” and affordable a few years down the road. I am still very satisfied with the unit and plan on using it for years to come.

Excelente para una computadora gaming, la BIOS viene actualizada para soportar un i9 9900K, lo único que está incómodo, es el acomodo de ls entradas SATA ya que están laterales y es un poco difícil conectarlas una vez montada la tarjeta.