Asus ProArt Z490 Creator-10G Review

Opening; Specification; Packaging & Accessories; Design

Opening

If usually mid-to-high end Z series motherboards have designs that are quite aggressive with the target user of gamers and overclockers, this motherboard has a slightly different approach. Full type motherboard ProArt Z490 Creator 10G is arguably the motherboard of Asus targeted at content creators, this can be seen from the use of names ProArt and Creator and has a calm design, far from the impression of gaming. Even though it has a calm design, as a Z series chipset motherboard that is attached to its overclock capability, does this motherboard have the ability to do that? Let’s start with the specifications first

Specification

	Asus ProArt Z490-Creator 10G
socket	LGA1200
Chipset	Z490
Form Factor	ATX

Packaging & Accessories

This motherboard comes with a packaging that can be considered luxurious. The box is black with gold lettering accents around it. At the top there is a diagonal image that gives the impression that this motherboard is designed for content creators. Judging from the motherboard design itself, it clearly looks professional, cool, and elegant

In the sales package, apart from the motherboard itself Asus also includes several supporting accessories that are quite complete. You will find four SATA cables, DisplayPort cable, 4cm fan holder, M.2 NVMe SSD screws and adhesives, books, CD Driver, black I/O shield with gold writing accents, and one Hyper LAN Card. . unfortunately on this mobo there is no WIFI AX like other mid to end mobo z490

Design

When viewed from the packaging, this motherboard is intended for content creators with a very minimalist but impressive box design classy, this also applies to the motherboard design itself. This motherboard that has an ATX form factor has a design that matches the box, dominated by black and accented with the words “Power Up Your Imagination” in gold on the VRM heatsink. In addition, this motherboard has a heatsink for one M.2 NVMe SSD slot adjacent to the chipset heatsink which is decorated with black ProArt writing on a gold background. Unfortunately this motherboard does not have decorative backlight accents, although this is relative.

I/O Ports & Connectors; Test Bed, VRM & CPU Performance

I/O Ports & Connectors

On the I/O Port, this motherboard has 2 USB Type-C with Thunderbolt 3 support, DisplayPort, HDMI Port, LAN port, 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, 2 USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, Optical SPDIF port, and audio jack as much as 5 holes.

While on the internal connector, this motherboard has 6 SATA 6GB/s ports, 2 M.2 NVMe SSD slots, one of which has a heatsink, 3 chassis fan connectors, 2 4 pin RGB 12v connectors, 1 3 pin ARGB 5v connector, and 3 connectors. PCIe x16 slots. In addition, this mobo also has a debug LED located on the top right next to the 12 pin motherboard power port. Unfortunately this motherboard doesn’t have a power button yet, so if you want to use this motherboard with a bench table configuration or troubleshooting, you are required to touch the power switch pin with a screwdriver.

Test Bed, VRM & CPU Performance

This motherboard has fourteen VRMs and all of those VRMs have a fairly thick heatsink on top. The fourteen VRMs are divided into two, with twelve VRMs to support the CPU and the remaining two to support the iGPU and SA or system agent. As a motherboard with a Z series chipset, it seems that something is missing if its VRM ability to withstand heat is not tested, for that we will test its VRM capability with the following test bed specifications:

To test the VRM capability, we stress test the Intel Core i9 10900KF CPU using AIDA64 software for 15 minutes and to monitor the VRM temperature, we use HWInfo64 software. The test bed that we use will run in two scenarios, namely the default scenario and the OC scenario at 5.2Ghz with a voltage of 1.4V. Oh yeah, for the VRM controller we still can’t get the datasheet info so let’s just try it, how is the VRM performance of this motherboard? It can be seen in the following chart.

After we did a stress test, the VRM on this motherboard has a very cool temperature. In the default scenario, the maximum temperature is monitored at 39.0°C. While in the OC scenario the temperature is at its maximum 42.0°C, still very cool. How about adding a 120mm fan on top?

Based on the results of the stress test with the addition of a 120mm fan that we did, the VRM temperature decreased quite significantly, both in the default and OC scenarios. With the results of the stress tests we carried out, both with and without additional fans, the VRM on this motherboard has a fairly good cooling, so if you plan to OC the CPU using this motherboard, you can be sure that this motherboard has the ability to withstand high temperatures. very good for the size of a non-gaming motherboard. But how about the performance of the CPU + GPU that we use when paired with this motherboard? Each motherboard certainly has its own rules, whether it’s the maximum CPU that can be used, memory speed in RAM, etc., we will use some synthetic testing software and some eSports and AAA games that we usually use, just check the test results on the following charts.

Looking at the benchmark results on the test bed that we use, whether it’s benchmarks with synthetic testing software or with esports and AAA games, the CPU and GPU that we use show a fairly high score, we didn’t find a very low test score, so we conclude if this motherboard is still capable of being coupled with a 10th Gen Intel Core i9 CPU even with an RTX 2080TI GPU.

Power Consumption; AI Overclocking; Software; Conclusion

Power Consumption

We also measure the power used by this CPU using Wattmeter and hwinfo to see, with a relatively low VRM temperature, how many watts this CPU has put out. To find out the maximum power consumption used by this CPU, we used a test scenario with Cinebench R15 all-core running 5 times and aida64. The results can be seen in the following chart.

AI Overclocking

If you want to overclock your CPU with this motherboard but you don’t understand basic overclocking, you can rely on the AI on this motherboard to do that.

How to? It is enough to enter the BIOS and then activate AI Overclocking, the CPU will be overclocked automatically. For the guide, you can press the f11 button in the bios. How much difference in performance is provided when this feature is enabled? We tested it by running the Cinebench R15 all-core and single-core software and HWInfo 64 to measure changes in performance. The results can be seen in the following chart

When the AI Overclocking feature has not been activated, the Intel Core i9 10900KF CPU is monitored to run at 4.9Ghz for All-core testing and 5.3Ghz for single-core testing, the clock speed is indeed quite high but when AI Overclocking is enabled, this CPU is able to run at 5.1Ghz for all-core and 5.4Ghz for single core so as to produce a higher score.

This feature is certainly very helpful for those of you who want to get a performance increase by overclocking but don’t understand or are still afraid to do it. In our opinion, this AI overclocking is quite effective for gaming scenarios, because it will set a high boost clock in light scenarios.

Software

This motherboard can be installed with some special line up software ProArt owned by Asus, some of these software examples are Creation First and Asus AI Suite 3 which you can download via the website Asus. You can monitor your internet traffic using the Creation First software Asus AI Suite 3 can be used to monitor the condition of your PC hardware, besides that AI Overclocking can also be done through this software.

Conclusion

Seeing the design and performance, this motherboard has a price tag in the range of 5 million. Besides having a pretty design classy and the performance is also quite good, after we paired it with the Intel Core i9 10900KF CPU, this mobo runs well in the default and OC scenarios, the VRM temperature is also cool and the intended performance is also very good.

In addition, the advantages of this motherboard are found in very complete supporting accessories, very rarely do we find motherboards in the 5 million price range that provide accessories such as DisplayPort cables, even though the cable length is quite short. One more advantage on this motherboard is that there is an AI Overclocking feature which is very helpful for increasing CPU performance with an OC process that is quite easy and can be used by even ordinary people.

Talking about the shortcomings, this motherboard does not have WiFi AX even though it has provided a Hyper LAN card. In addition, with no power button and OC indicator, it will be quite inconvenient in terms of turning on the PC for those of you who are used to using open cases or when troubleshooting.

Editor: DayuAkbar