Biostar Racing Z490GTN Motherboard Review

How Much Does it Cost?

Coming in with an MSRP of $155.99, the Biostar Racing Z490GTN is one of the cheaper Z490 ITX boards out at the time of review. While the price is good, finding one if a whole different story but if you can, it should be around $90 cheaper than that of its competitors.

Overview

Biostar motherboards may not be the most readily available or flashy, but they do the trick. While their performance normally sits middle of the road, so does their price and this makes them a solid contender for those looking for a board that just works. The Z490GTN that we looked at today should have most of the features you would want from Z490, especially in an m-ITX board. No frills and no flash, just a board that does what it says it can.

Build Quality & Design

Biostar isn’t overly known for their quality and design, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t take a few extra steps to help ensure your products works as best possible. They have gone with more durable power connectors for the 24-pin and 8-pin ports to help ensure a more stable connection. It also features a 9-phase power design which according to Biostar, guarantees genuine power efficacy.

Performance

The overall performance of the Z490GTN was nothing special. While we had no issues at all during any of our testings, the results are a little lacklustre. This board sits about right in the middle for most of our results which is where we would hope a product of this calibre would be found. While it may be a way away from being the best board we have tested, it is just as far away from being the worse. Overall, all things factored in and we really can’t slate the performance too much.

Added Value

The addition of the M.2 2230 WiFi module is nice to see. Allowing for WiFi 6 will be a welcome addition. But wait, they didn’t actually include the module needed to use this feature so you will have to go and buy one for yourself. Not the end of the world, just an extra expense when other competitor boards may come with a similar solution. There is also the case of the M.2 being mounted on the backside of the motherboard. This is nice to see as at least they didn’t just get rid of it, just moved it so users can still make use of this nice NVMe Gen 3 speeds.

Should I Buy One?

If you are looking for a standard run-of-the-mill board in m-ITX form factor based on the Z490 chipset, this board may tick the boxes. It has enough features to make it considerable for your next build and that’s about it. It’s not the best, but it’s surely not the worst and the lack of flashy components and heatsinks should help keep the price down when compared to others.