ASRock Z590 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 Motherboard Review

Verdict and Conclusion

Give me any Mini-ITX motherboard to review and it will instantly get a big thumbs up from me. Yeah, I’m a little biased, but I just love the size of these motherboards, plus if it comes with a load of features too, then that’s it … it’s already on my recommended list. 

The ASRock Z590 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 is perfect for any modders or enthusiasts, who plan to build a Mini-ITX based system that can support the latest Intel 11th Gen Rocket Lake processors. What’s great about this tiny motherboard, is that it literally has all the features you’ll find on a full size version of their ATX motherboard. Plus it supports PCIE Gen 4.0 standards, both on the PCIE x16 Steel slot as well as the M.2 slot for your SSD.

For a compact Mini-ITX motherboard, the ASRock Z590 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 is absolutely packed with some amazing features … and I love it. To list a few … you get the Killer E3100G 2.5G LAN, Intel Gigabit LAN, Killer AX1675x 802.11ax(WiFi 6E) + BT 5.2, as well as Intel Thunderbolt 4 (Type-C). For storage, it comes with 3 x SATA3 ports, 1 x Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4 x4) and 1 x Ultra M.2 (PCIe Gen3 x4 & SATA3). Other features include the PCIe 4.0 x16 Steel slot, USB 3.2 Gen2 ports (5 rear and 2 front), ASRock Super Alloy, 7.1 CH HD Nahimic Audio and of course ASRock’s Polychrome Sync.

During our benchmarks, we got some pretty good scores including a PCMark10 score of 8,064, and a Passmark9 score of 8,918. For Port Royal, we got a score of 6,652 with a DLSS score of 43.15 fps. For 3DMark Time Spy and Firestrike, we got an excellent score of 11,279 and 23,827 respectively. 

The XMP profiles worked flawlessly and I love the fact that I can just slot in my Patriot Viper 4 Steel DDR4-4400 ram, and the motherboard ran them at full speed with no issues at all. 

We didn’t do much CPU overclocking as the Core i9-11900K is already fast enough for us, especially with Turbo Boost running at 5.3GHz. If you want to overclock higher, then you need some serious CPU cooling solutions. These Rocket Lake chips run HOT! … over 100 degrees Celsius at full load, that’s just running your standard Turbo Boost.

Pricewise, the ASRock Z590 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 motherboard is fairly expensive from what I can gather, and the availability is quite low. This is probably due to ship shortages around the world. However if you’re interested, you can buy something similar … the ASRock Z590M-ITX/AX motherboard for around USD $215 from Amazon – https://amzn.to/3tPBljq. Latest price on the ASRock Z590 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 … https://amzn.to/3uWGU0i

Pros:

• Supports all Intel 11th Gen (Rocket Lake) and 10th Gen (Comet Lake) processors
• Intel Z590 chipset
• Very good overall performance
• Excellent XMP profile compatibility
• Killer E3100G 2.5GB/s LAN
• Killer AX1675x Wifi 6e
• PCIE 4.0 Steel Slot
• 1 x Hyper M.2 slot (PCIE Gen4)
• 1 x Ultra M.2 slot (PCIE Gen3)

Cons:

• None.

Final Words:

ASRock currently has over over 25+ Mini-ITX motherboards in their catalogue for 2021. They’re definitely one of the market leaders in my opinion, when it comes to Mini-ITX motherboards for both Intel and AMD platforms. They’ve been making numerous Mini-ITX motherboards as far as I can remember. And with years of experience behind them, it’s no wonder that their latest Z590 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 motherboard, is a real winner in terms of both performance and features. If you’re after a no-compromise Mini-ITX motherboard based on the Intel Z590 chipset … then this is the motherboard to go for.