The Biostar Racing Z490GTN Review: $200 for Comet Lake mini-ITX

Board Features

The Biostar Racing Z490GTN is a mini-ITX model designed to offer users an entry point to Z490 on a small form factor. Firmly set as one of the most budget models overall for Z490, the Z490GTN has a single PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot with support for both NVMe and SATA drives, as well as four SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. Due to the small size of the mini-ITX form factor, there is a single full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, with just two memory slots with support for up to DDR4-4400 with a maximum capacity of up to 64 GB.

There's a Realtek ALC892 HD audio codec with three 3.5 mm audio jacks on the rear panel, with a front panel audio header also present. For networking, there is a solitary Intel I219-V Gigabit Ethernet controller, with space for users to install their own wireless interface, with a Key-E M.2 slot and holes on the rear IO shield. The Biostar Racing Z490GTN doesn't set the world alight in terms of USB support, with no USB 3.2 Gen2 support whatsoever. The board does have four USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports on the rear panel, with a single USB 3.2 G1 Type-A header offering two ports, and a single USB 2.0 ports which also offers two ports. Also on the rear panel is an HDMI and D-Sub pair of video outputs, as well as a PS/2 keyboard and mouse combo port.

Test Bed

As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.

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