Verdict and Conclusion
Most gaming motherboards are designed to offer the best price/performance ratio. And to save costs, most will lack enthusiast features which a lot of gamers won’t need. However, there are those who wants the best of both worlds … great aesthetics, lots of enthusiast features and plenty of expansion and connectivity. So to satisfy the demands of these gaming enthusiasts, ASRock have launched the Phantom Gaming Z890 NOVA WiFi.
This motherboard offers mostly the same enthusiast features as found on ASRock’s flagship Z890 Taichi, but this time it includes onboard RGB lighting and a slightly better aesthetics. One thing to note, is that the Z890 NOVA WiFi is their top-end model in the Phantom Gaming Series. The other models such as the Riptide and Lightning offer less enthusiast features, and hence much more affordable.
Using the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K for our tests, which I have to say is pretty dull and unexciting, we managed to get some reasonable scores in all of our benchmarks, including a Cinebench 2024 score of 2,479 points for multi core, and 144 points for single core. For PCMark 10, we got a fair score of 9,009, and a score of 17,603 for PassMark 11.
For Procyon Video Editing Benchmark, we got a score of 10,632 and a score of 238 for the AI Computer Vision Benchmark. For 3DMark Steel Nomad and Speedway, we got decent scores of 6,648 and 7,504 respectively. And finally, for Port Royal and Timespy, we got an adequate score of 18,511 and 26,915 respectively.
Performance aside, what makes the Z890 NOVA WiFi really attractive is the wealth of enthusiast features. Just like the original Z890 Taichi, it uses an 8-layer, 2oz Copper PCB and the powerful 20+1+2+1+1 Power Phase Design with 110A SPS for Vcore, and 20K black capacitors for excellent stability and reliability. For cooling it comes with the same composite VRM heatsink and heat pipe as found on the Z890 Taichi.
For storage, it comes with a total of 4 x SATA ports and 5 x Hyper M.2 PCIE Genx4 slots, as well as 1 x Blazing M.2 PCIE Gen5 slot for SSDs. These M.2 slots feature tool-less design, which allows users to mount their M.2 SSDs with ease. They also come with a bottom heatsink which enables it to dissipate heat more efficiently. What’s more, ASRock have also included a M.2 PCIE expansion card which allows you to further add up to 4 x M.2 SSDs.
When it comes to connectivity, there’s plenty. On the back I/O panel, you’ll find the connectors for WiFi 7 antennas, HDMI output, 2 x USB 3.0 ports, 2 x Thunderbolt 4 ports, clear CMOS and BIOS Flashback buttons, 2 x Lightning USB ports, 2 x USB Power ports, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 ports, 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector, Line-out and Mic-in. And lastly, something which you don’t normally find on gaming motherboards … you get both 2.5 GbE and 5 GbE LAN ports.
To complete the list of entusiats features, the ASRock Z890 NOVA WiFi comes with diagnostic LEDs, onboard power-on and reset buttons, a total of 7 x 4-pin fan headers for cooling, solid metal backplate, and easy-to-access clear CMOS and BIOS Flashback buttons on the rear I/O panel.
You can buy the ASRock Z890 NOVA WiFi motherboard for around USD $349 from Amazon – https://amzn.to/40dezpR
Final Words:
If this ain’t the best Z890 gaming motherboard on the market right now … then I don’t know what is. The ASRock Phantom Gaming Z890 NOVA WiFi combines all the enthusiast features you could possibly want, into a gaming motherboard that not only gives you great aesthetics, but also offers performance to match.
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