In a relatively quiet launch, ASRock has added another model to its Phantom Gaming series of motherboards: the new ATX sized ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S. The Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S represents a modest entry-level offering onto the chipset with a single M.2 slot, six SATA ports, and a 1 GbE NIC.
The main focal point of the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S is to provide users with a cost-effective and entry-level option onto Intel's Z390 chipset without breaking the bank. On the controller front, the Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S makes use of the more affordable Intel I219V 1 GbE NIC, with the option to add wireless capability through a single M.2 Key E 2230 slot; this uses the Z390 chipset's native CNVi. Also included is a Realtek ALC1200 HD audio codec with ELNA, which adds three 3.5 mm audio jacks on the rear panel.
While the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S doesn't support NVIDIA SLI across it's two full-length PCIe 3.0 slots (x16/x4), two-way AMD CrossFire multi-graphics card configurations can be utilized. The board also has three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots, as well as a single M.2 22110 slot with support for NVMe boot drives, and six SATA ports capable of supporting RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays. On the rear panel is two PS/2 combo ports for legacy keyboards and mice, as well as four USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports, two USB 2.0 ports, and a single HDMI 1.4 video output.
On the performance front, the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S features an 8-phase power delivery with a single 8-pin 12 V EPS power connector. The CPU VCore section of the power delivery features a slimline aluminium heatsink, while the SoC area relies on passive cooling across the MOSFETs. Memory support is impressive with DDR4-4300 RAM supported with a maximum capacity of 128 GB across four available memory slots.
As it stands, the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming 4S is currently available at Amazon for an attractive price of $118, with the slightly lower Z390 Phantom Gaming 4 model available for just $100 on Newegg. With the ASRock Phantom Gaming range of motherboards and graphics cards is primarily targetted at the mid to high-end gamers, this marks a noticeably different approach from ASRock with the company looking to extend its Phantom Gaming series across all of the different pricing brackets.
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