EVGA Z490 FTW WiFi Motherboard Review

Motherboards are an interesting product.  At their lowest level they are designed to connect all the components of your PC and if it does that the product should be considered successful and yet, nobody wants to buy a plain motherboard.  To help add value to an otherwise functional component of your modern personal computer the motherboard maker will start adding features.  Some specialize in overclocking while others might favor watercooling or include gaming friendly options to help you frag better. 

In this review we will be looking at the new EVGA Z490 FTW motherboard.  Visually this board is almost a direct copy of the EVGA Z390 FTW.  There are a few minor tweaks and an effort to include a few overclocking features found on the Dark edition.

• Chipset – Intel Z490
• SLI – NVIDIA SLI Ready
• SATA – 4 Native SATA 6.0Gbps Ports / 2 ASMedia SATA 6.0Gbps Ports
• RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD
• USB – 5x USB 2.0 (1 SPI to USB port, 4 from Internal Headers)
• Memory Support – 4 DIMM Dual-Channel DDR4 4400MHz+ (up to 128GB)
• Capacitors – 100% Solid State
• Ethernet – Intel i219V Gigabit NIC
• Audio – Realtek ALC1220 7.1 Channel HD Audio + SV3H615
• Display Outputs – DP 1.2, HDMI 1.4
• Fan Headers – 8 (2 CPU PWM, 6 PWM/DC)
• PCB – 6 Layers
• PCI-E Slot Arrangement – 2x16, 1x1
• NVMe Support – Yes (PCIe + SATA)

Form Factor

• ATX Form Factor
• Length: 12in - 305mm
• Width: 9.6in - 244mm

As I had mentioned before the EVGA Z490 FTW WiFi is a basic copy of the Z390 FTW with a few features added.  I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this motherboard might be a bit of a hodgepodge.  The formula for most projects is to take want works and start to make some tweaks.  Thing is if those tweaks are not done logically or you mess with the previous formula things can go sideways.

Let's take a look.