Gigabyte Z390 Designare Review: A Motherboard For Creative Pros

Today we are going to take a look at Gigabyte’s Z390 Designare motherboard, one of the company's more recent Socket 1151-based boards for Intel's 8th and 9th Generation Coffee Lake-based processors. This board has a lean and mean look about it, even menacing in a way, with its mostly black aesthetic with silver highlights scattered about. Its VRM heatsink even carries a yin-yang motif, with the black sink at the top and silver to the left of the CPU socket.

 

Other top-end features include, support for DDR4 memory at up to 4266MHz+, support for multiple, full-bandwidth NVMe storage solutions (M.2, and PCIe slot connections), and dual Intel Gigabit LAN, The board has customizable RGB LEDs underneath and across the top of the motherboard as well, to add a bit of flare and liven up its dark PCB.

Gigabyte Z390 Designare Motherboard Specifications & Features

We tested the Gigabyte Z390 Designare with an Intel Core i9-9900K processor, coupled to a 32GB kit of Corsair Vengeance 3200MHz DDR4 memory.

Gigabyte simplified the packaging with this board, opting for a dark, clean look, just like the PCB. The packaging features a close-up shot of the VRM and embedded IO cover, with a lighted-v pattern.

Within the accessories kit for the Gigabyte Z390 Designaire, we find:

• 2x Manuals
• Installation DVD
• Mini DP to Full Size DP Cable (For Thunderbolt Input)
• 4 x SATA Cables
• M.2 Mounting Hardware
• Wi-Fi/Bluetooth Antennae
• G Connector (Front Panel Quick connector)

This accessory setup is more than adequate and allows for pretty much everything we can think of that would be needed even for a well-appointed content creation rig with plenty of storage attached.

Next, we will take a walk around the board, get a good look at the UEFI BIOS environment, and then checkout the benchmarks before buttoning things up. Let’s get going...