BIOSTAR Z590I VALKYRIE Motherboard Review

[Dan_D]

Introduction

BIOSTAR isn’t a company we see a lot of in North America. For as long as I’ve been acquainted with the brand it’s been talking about increasing its presence in the North American market. Today we are taking a look at BIOSTAR’s Z590I VALKYRIE Ver. 5.0 (IZ59A), which is a mini-ITX motherboard offering. This is quite unique because it is based on Intel’s enthusiast Z590 chipset but in a small form factor motherboard. It’s literally a ton of features, options and support packed into a small motherboard with an MSRP of around $359 in the US. The official press release can be found here...

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[Dogsofjune]

Another good review of the mobo by FPS.

Personally tho, my experience with Biostar from back in the day make me shudder still
It's good to see they can produce a decent board these days.
I however would be hard pressed to spend $350 on a Biostar when there are better to be found.

Of course, this is all personal preference on my part.

 

[Dan_D]

BIOSTAR has actually been making good motherboards for close to ten years now. That being said, I've always reviewed their higher end or more enthusiast centric options. I haven't worked with their bargain basement stuff since the early 2000's. My experiences with that stuff were few and far between and not really all that bad to tell you the truth.

When I think of cheap, ****ty motherboards I think of ECS, FIC, or PC Chips. There are also many others that died off like M-Tech, Soyo, and QDI. Not to say that those were all terrible, they weren't necessarily. Although, they all did have some awful models. Soyo being the exception out of that list as it generally had good PR and absolutely horrendous motherboards.

EDIT: It seems PCChips died off sometime around the socket 478 / S754 era. FIC actually left the PC business entirely and transitioned to making electronics for the automotive industry. I think Soyo, M-Tech and QDI flat died off the same way ABIT did.

 

[Niner51]

Nice review. I have used a few Biostar motherboards in budget builds with no issues. I remember Soyo back in the day, with their Dragon series motherboards being the most popular. I was mostly into ABIT and Epox boards back then, but found the Epox quality lacking after a while.

 

[Dan_D]

Nice review. I have used a few Biostar motherboards in budget builds with no issues. I remember Soyo back in the day, with their Dragon series motherboards being the most popular. I was mostly into ABIT and Epox boards back then, but found the Epox quality lacking after a while.

Epox quality was lackluster to start with. ABIT at that time had their own issues but they straightened them out. Unfortunately, by the end of their run as a company their motherboards were mediocre at best. The Soyo's were always popular, and I can't understand why. I saw a lot of failures on those.

 

[Niner51]

The Soyo's were always popular, and I can't understand why.

I honestly think it was mostly their name and color scheme back then (black and purple). I remember all those jumpers on their boards as well. A past friend of mine loved those boards, but he would have all types of issues at LAN parties. Epox had cap bursting issues which I experienced. Never really had an issue with Abit besides one NF2 board dying on me, but that was overclocking a 2500+ to a 3200+ which was popular back in the day. Thanks for the trip down memory lane Dan..

 

[AKBrian]

PC Chips merged with ECS, who still does ODM work. I think their last notable consumer board was NZXT's Z370.

 

[Dan_D]

PC Chips merged with ECS, who still does ODM work. I think their last notable consumer board was NZXT's Z370.

I didn't know that. Although, I do know the NZXT Z490 boards are made by ASRock.

 

[noko]

I have a B550 Biostar board with a 3900x, no issues and one of the few board I've ever owned that has zero problems going to sleep and back. Now the VRMs on that board I would say is shaky but I am not OCing. With two (one super cheap and the other kinda cheap) Biostar boards, they purred with no real issues plus actually had frequent bios updates for a long period of time.

Very nice review Dan, to me the price seems high but today everything seems to be way high.