BIOSTAR Z690A-SILVER Motherboard Released
Peter Donnell / 3 years ago
BIOSTAR has just unveiled their brand-new Z690A-SILVER motherboard. It has been designed to complement the latest Intel Alder Lake Z690 chipset and the latest Intel CPUs. Albeit, it’s clearly not a flagship motherboard, but the Z690A-SILVER motherboard is still pretty well equipped with a solid range of features.
BIOSTAR PCIe 5.0
PCIe 5.0 allows the Z690A-SILVER motherboard to deliver a data transfer rate of 128 Gb/s. Sure there are no Gen 5 SSDs or graphics cards yet, but it’s only a matter of time. Having that extra bandwidth available is certainly no bad thing for future-proofing your build. The motherboard will also support 4 DIMMs of high-speed DDR4 RAM, capable of overclocking numbers exceeding 5000+MHz (O.C). Of course, you also get PCIe M.2 4.0, USB 3.2 GEN2 Type-A, and Type-C, giving you plenty of connectivity.
“BIOSTAR promises superior hardware safety for all components supported by their heavy-duty 70 A Dr.MOS and proprietary Digital PWM technology designed to keep all hardware components safe while providing efficient, stable current throughout the motherboard.” – Biostar
The design looks great too, nothing too extreme, but the silver and black design should prove fairly popular and will match up with most other components easily enough. Furthermore, The “LED ROCK ZONE- RGB SYNC” technology allows users a full range of RGB light customisation. Using VIVID LED DJ software, users can personalise the light effects on the motherboard as well as externally connected RGB light strips that can be easily installed on the motherboard using the provided 5v and 12v headers.
The Z690A-SILVER packs all the essentials in its rear I/O panel. Designed with 8 USB ports consisting of 1x USB 3.2 (Gen2) Type-C Port, 5x USB 3.2 (Gen2) Ports, and 2x USB 2.0 ports for extremely versatile compatibility with any USB device. Furthermore, a single 1x PS/2 Keyboard / Mouse Port provides extra connectivity to connect an older device to the system. Additionally, 2x WiFi Antenna ports that support WiFi 6 and a single LAN port powered by Realtek RTL8125B chipset are readily available for faster internet connectivity. A single DVI-D port, a DP-Out port, and an HDMI 2.0 supporting up to 4K. There’s also the ALC1220 chipset delivering multi-channel audio.
BIOSTAR hasn’t given us the retail price, but looking at the package, I suspect it’ll be a mid-range price and fairly competitive too. For more information, visit the product page.