ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 Review

Overclocking and Verdict

Unless a board is truly sub-standard, CPU overclocking between vendors is pretty much identical. The CPU clock alone doesn’t tell one much about the motherboard, unless when used with liquid nitrogen and even then, it’s not a guarantee you’ll be able to appreciate the difference as they may be entirely CPU dependant. That is to say a 6.3GHz CPU on the best Z390 motherboard there is, remains 6.3GHz on this board, the difference will be in the memory tuning. As stated earlier with the PG9 you’re looking at C12 4000MHz for competitive overclocking and about 4,200MHz C14~C16 at most for everyday high-performance computing, depending on the DRAM kit and population.

VERDICT

In as far as gaming motherboards go, this one ticks all the right boxes. Honestly, it’s tough to buy an outright bad board these days even at this price point. That said, ASRock is ultimately offering a rich feature set and capabilities. Competing boards from other vendors will have a tough time matching this price/performance ratio.

For the extreme overclockers a better fit is likely the Z390 Phantom Gaming ITX/AC, not for any other reason but better memory overclocking. That aside, the Phantom Gaming 9 is a solid offering. It may not blow you away, but it does bring all platform features together at pocket friendly price. Overall, I have no issues recommending this board to anyone building a mid to high end gaming machine.