Colorful has created a new Z690 motherboard for gamers and creators looking for a motherboard with a bit more of an artistic tweet.. The board is called the iGame Z690D5 Ultra and comes with DDR5 support at a rather low price of $289. To get there, however, it lacks any PCIe Gen 5 support.
The board's aesthetic is its most striking feature, with a wave-like theme that carries its way throughout the entire motherboard. You can see it in the black accents and on the M.2, chipset, and power delivery heatsink. The board's color scheme is also white, which is great for users who are looking to do white builds with Intel's Alder Lake or future Meteor Lake processors.
The board comes with an 18+1 phase design, powered by 90A MOSFETs, and supports up to 6,000MHz DDR5 memory. The mobo is capable of supporting three M.2 Gen 4 SSDs, with sizes ranging from 2242 to 2260 and 2280. Additionally, there are six SATA 3 connectors for connecting SATA-based hard drives and SSDs.
For PCIe-based connectivity, the board differs slightly from other Z690 boards in that it does not support PCIe Gen 5 speeds at all, and is instead replaced by Gen 4 speeds entirely. We don't know why Colorful made this change, but presumably, it was to cut down on production costs. At least for now, this change won't affect many users since PCIe Gen 5 is a relatively new technology. However, in the upcoming years, we suspect it will hurt the board's performance as Gen 5 becomes more mainstream.
There are a total of two x16 lanes on the motherboard, with the first featuring a full 16 connection, and the other being wired with 8 lanes only. So if you plan to use both PCIe slots, you'll be limited to 8 lanes on both slots. Additionally, there is a single PCIe 3.0 x4 slot and two additional x1 slots.
For rear I/O you get a total of seven USB ports, and two display outputs. Four of the USB ports are USB 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps connections, along with a single USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20Gbps Type-C port. The remaining two USB ports are standard USB 2.0 ports. Display outputs include a single HDMI port and a single DisplayPort connection.
Finally, the remaining rear I/O connections include six audio jacks for surround sound support powered by an 8-channel high definition audio CODEC, and a 2.5G Intel Ethernet port for internet connectivity. Speaking of the internet, the board also comes with an Intel Wi-Fi 6 chip for wireless connectivity — the Wi-Fi chip should also include Bluetooth functionality for wireless devices.
