Gigabyte Z390 Designare Review: A Motherboard For Creative Pros


Gigabyte Z390 Designare Summary and Conclusion

Performance SummaryThe Gigabyte Z390 Designare is a solid board overall, with subdued and some may say minimalist looks. However, we think it could be a good fit for many builds, thanks to its easy to work with, thoughtful design, styling, and color scheme. This board was brought to market with creative pros and designers in mind. This is a productivity-targeted motherboard that would be just as happy in a gaming rig as it would in a professional workstation.

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Gigabyte Z390 Designare - Find It At Newegg, Currently $269.99

The Gigabyte Z390 Designare was easy to tweak, and effortlessly achieved a stable 5.2GHz overclock with our 9900K. If you are lucky enough to get a chip capable of hitting that at low voltage like ours was, you could do the same. The VRM on this motherboard is more than capable of handling that overclock and much more. The Z390 Designare's ability to switch the bottom most slot from PCH DMI-connected PCIe lanes to CPU root-connected PCIe lanes, to support high bandwidth devices like add-in SSD cards, is a great feature for content creation types looking for maximum storage bandwidth and expansion capability.

The Gigabyte Z390 Designare also hosts dual rear panel Thunderbolt ports, which is great for external storage as well. And with the board's Displayport pass through, it's possible to have displays at the end of the chain, which is a also very nice addition. Finally, the Gigabyte Z390 Designare is listed currently at $269, which we feel is a competitive price point for its feature set and the level configuration options it brings to DIY PC builders or system OEMs alike.

The Gigabyte Z390 Designare delivers a few innovative features for creative professionals and designers at a price point that is easily justifiable versus similar boards in its class. It might not be a high-end enthusiast beast, but the Z390 Designare will get the job done nicely for the vast majority of use cases without breaking the bank.

hothardware recommended
 

hot not
  • Excellent, Stable Performance
  • CNVi WiFi Module With BT5
  • Dual NVMe M.2 Storage
  • DDR4 Memory 4266MHz Support
  • Beefy VRM
  • Dual Thunderbolt 3
  • Flexible PCIe Lane Configuration
  • Could Use Additional Fan Headers
  • No High Speed Multi-Gig Ethernet



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