Product Showcase
Product Showcase
Gigabyte offers anZ490 Aorus Xtreme, just ranked below it is the motherboard we test today, the Z490 Aorus Master. The boards have what gigabyte refers to as 'shielded memory routing' and is based upon a 14-phase design/delivery backed by 90A power stages and tantalum polymer capacitors, all cooled by a two of aluminum heat sinks. In a nutshell, that's very strong VRM ranging in this into an enthusiast-class. Btw there are two 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power inputs. The Extreme has a bot more to offer on the Ethernet side, the Master offers an Intel 2.5 G Ethernet (Intel i225 ) controller and of course AX wifi, with an Intel Wi-Fi 6 wireless (Intel AX201). The Master offers three PCIe 3.0 slots which run at x16, x8/x8. Storage-wise you will see hidden under a heatsink a threefold of PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, six SATA ports (RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 array support). On the rear IO you'll spot 1x USB 3.2 G2 20 Gbps Type-C, 3x USB 3.2 G2 10 Gbps Type-A, 2x USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and 4x USB 2.0 ports. The onboard audio based on Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec and ESS 9118 DAC. You will spot a clear CMOS button, HDMI video output, and a BIOS Flashback button (an awesome feature that updates firmware without memory, processor, and graphics card installed).