Supermicro SuperO C9Z390-CG-IW Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. Board Layout and Features4. UEFI5. Software6. Testing Methodology7. Tests: CPU Related8. Tests: Memory Related9. Tests: Gaming Related10. Tests: Motherboard Features Performance11. Overclocking & Power Consumption12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

ATTO Disk Benchmark

The ATTO disk benchmark is a Windows-based utility for testing storage performance of any storage drive or controller. We use the default benchmark setup.

M.2 PCIe Performance

For M.2 testing we use a Toshiba OCZ RD400 256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD.

All storage performance (M.2, USB and SATA) on this motherboard was slightly behind everything else we've tested, both Z390 but also previous Z370 and X299 motherboards. Even after a clean copy of Windows 10 version 1809, the performance differential remained.

It's fairly small, around 5 to 15 per cent, but enough to notice in testing. KitGuru informed Supermicro about these results but KitGuru has not yet received an explanation or solution. We predict it could be a consequence of a UEFI setting, a bandwidth sharing issue, recent changes to Intel/Windows drivers that we've not yet discovered or some hardware quirk.

The M.2 drive did thermal throttle as there is no M.2 cooling solution.

USB Performance

We test USB 3.0 and 3.1 performance using a pair of Transcend SSD370S 512GB SSDs in RAID 0 connected to an RaidSonic Icy Box RD2253-U31 2-bay USB 3.1 enclosure powered by an ASMedia ASM1352R controller.

USB 3.0 and 3.1 performance were slightly behind competitors.

SATA III 6Gbps Performance

For SATA 6Gbps testing we use an OCZ Trion 150 480GB SSD.

SATA performance was also a little behind the competition.

Audio

Rightmark Audio Analyser is a freeware benchmarking utility designed to objectively test the performance characteristics of audio solutions. We setup a line-in line-out loop and execute the record/playback test before generating the results report you see below. A sampling mode of 24-bit, 192 kHz is tested where available. If unavailable the closest alternative operating mode available is used and clearly marked.

Audio performance was excellent and just goes to show that perhaps PCB separation, plentiful audio capacitors and additional operational amplifiers do not make as much difference as one might think.

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