ASRock Z790 Phantom Gaming NOVA Motherboard Review – A Well-Priced High-End Board

Conclusion - Phantom Gaming's Super NOVA!

ASRock seems to have wanted to go all out within the Phantom Gaming segment with its Nova and based on what the motherboard has to offer, it looks like the company achieved the goal. The Nova is a high-end motherboard with a premium gaming look and an absolute bang for the buck in the $300 US range.

As I have said, gamers will love the aggressive tone and all-black color scheme that ASRock is using on the PG NOVA. Sure the motherboard has all the ARGB/RGB goodies on it too but even without them, the motherboard stands out with its own unique design and the large "NOVA" branding with Phantom Gaming accents across the PCH & I/O covers. ASRock is also catching up with some of the more interesting trends in the motherboard industry such as toolless M.2 designs & while I do miss a PCIe slot release feature which is becoming a common site on boards, I hope that the next lineup from ASRock also implements them for a friendlier DIY design.

On the performance front, ASRock doesn't hold back and offers a 22-phase VRM design with 90A power stages that is more than enough to support power-guzzling monsters such as the Intel Core i9-14900K CPU. It handled our overclocked Core i9-13900K CPU well throughout the tests and I was also able to run some tests with the 14900K sample that Intel had sent us. The motherboard is able to support the chip out of the box without requiring any BIOS update though I would recommend using the latest BIOS to get the most out of the motherboard, especially if you are planning to use higher-speed memory kits. The motherboard is rated to support up to DDR5-8000+ which is a great thing and there is a large list of support memory kits within the QVL list over here.

VRM cooling is another strong aspect and the active cooler does keep the temps cool throughout stock and overclocked runs. As for noise output, the noise of the fan wasn't noticeable however you do get to hear the fan spinning as the temperatures increase. In terms of I/O, the major features are support for WIFI 7 and a wide variety of USB 3.2 Gen 2/1 ports. There's no USB4 support however ASRock provides a Thunderbolt4 connector for its TB4 AIC which can be bought separately. On the storage front, you are getting six M.2 slots which is insane and five of those are natively Gen4 x4 while 1 even gets you Gen5 x4 speeds.

With the NOVA, ASRock has a very solid option in the $300 US Z790 motherboard category with aesthetics that gamers would love and performance that will be more than enough for Intel's 14th Gen Core i9 CPUs. The motherboard definitely got a recommendation from me and to make things even better, the board can currently be found for $279.99 US.

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