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The motherboard market is already highly competitive when just considering options from the main four motherboard vendors, adding Supermicro's offerings gives consumers even more choice. Supermicro knows it is a tough fight against well-established motherboard brands like ASUS and Gigabyte, not just in the UK but globally. Thus it comes to market with its unique slant of “Server Quality, Built for Gaming” to lure customers away from the mainstream motherboard brands.
In our opinion Supermicro pulled this off well with its SuperO C9X299-PG300, giving rival motherboard brands a run for their money with high quality server-grade VRMs and a plethora of interesting connectivity and features. Unfortunately, the same can't necessarily be said for the Supermicro SuperO C9Z390-CG-IW which could do better to find its footing in a crowded marketplace.
Supermicro has done well to deliver a product built from quality components that ticks most of the boxes for mini-ITX builders. The final product needs refinement on a number of smaller issues but thanks to some Supermicro work in the background the UEFI performs a lot better than it did when KitGuru first benchmarked it. Its UEFI does, however, still need more refinement to match the standard of the big four motherboard vendors.
Supermicro issued a test UEFI version to KitGuru, still marked as version 1.0b but dated 5th January 2019, which sets the PL1 power limit to 180W and PL2 power limit to 250W when an XMP memory profile is used thus correcting the XMP throttling issue we identified. However, at stock with XMP enabled the CPU now runs at 4.7GHz across all cores and runs at an approximate 145W TDP, which is well outside of Intel's stock 95W specification.
The performance has improved but this is at the expense of heat and power consumption, a trade-off other motherboard vendors have also been silently making without informing consumers. This new BIOS is not yet available for public download but Supermicro informs us it will be made available soon.
The new UEFI version also corrects a number of other issues we identified such as erratic LLC behaviour when setting manual VCore voltages, high CPU temperatures and erroneous VID/VCore readings.
For those with an appreciation for quality components, server heritage and design simplicity, the SuperO C9Z390-CG-IW is still a viable and capable option as long as the prospective buyer is aware of the product's limitations before purchasing.
The Supermicro SuperO C9Z390-CG-IW is not currently available to buy in the UK. However, it can be bought, including import taxes and shipping, for £193.19 from Newegg USA. The warranty for UK customers would be the same as the terms of the warranty available to customers in the USA.
In the USA it can be had for $203.74 at Newegg and has a peculiar 1 year warranty on parts with 3 years warranty on labour. For most customers this effectively means a “normal” 1 year warranty with parts-cost repairs in years 2 and 3, to quote the company's warranty policy directly:
“Supermicro has no obligation to repair or replace parts beyond the one-year warranty period; however, Supermicro may repair or replace provided that 1) Customer pays for the cost of obtaining the part(s) and 2) the part(s) are available for purchase.”
Pros:
- Two VRM heatsinks
- High quality VRM components
- Shielded PCIe and DDR4 slots
- Dual M.2
- USB 3.1 Type-A, Type-C and front panel
- High quality audio
- Onboard WiFi and Gigabit Ethernet
- Bright and easy to control RGB lighting
- Neat SuperO Booster software
- Debug, power and M.2 LEDs
Cons:
- Peculiar power monitoring data regarding the CPU
- New UEFI increases idle power consumption
- Below expected USB, SATA and M.2 throughput
- No M.2 cooling
- Only 2 fan headers
- RGB header and onboard RGB lighting are not independently controllable
- Clunky UEFI fan controls
- Clearing CMOS is fiddly with no button and vertical mount
- Only 1 year warranty
- Limited availability
KitGuru says: The SuperO C9Z390-CG-IW is a reasonable mini-ITX offering for Intel's Z390 chipset, but Supermicro's “pint-sized powerhouse” needs a bit more polish.
