Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Master review - Introduction

Aorus Z390 Master review
Gigabyte is really shaking things up with Z390

In this review, we peek at one of the most beautiful Z390 motherboards released, meet the Aorus Z390 Master. ready for 8th or 9th Gen processors this board is about performance and aesthetics, heck even the CPU socket has metal reinforced dual 8-pin connectors. The dual pin connector should indicate a strong VRM, and this motherboard as such has 12 power phases.

With the new Coffee Lake-S refresh you can expect three processors predominantly become popular in demand for the PC gamer, as each and every one of the processors will offer fantastic gaming performance if your graphics card is fast enough. Intel is able to boost the Turbo frequencies towards that 5 GHz domain. And that is a big advantage that Intel has over AMD, which is wedges shut at that 4.2 GHz range with Ryzen 2000 (which is overall really good, but the high per clock core is where it matters in CPU bound gaming; e.g. with super high-end graphics cards like the RTX 2080 Ti).  Intel is releasing these three 9000 series processors initially:

• Core i5-9600K (6 Core / 6 Threads)
• Core i7-9700K (8 Core / 8 Threads)
• Core i9-9900K (8 Core / 16 Threads)

That does not mean you'll only see three processors in the Core 9000 range, word out on the street is that a procs like 9100, 9400 and 9500 Core series processor will be released as well. However, this specific launch invokes three processors. For this review, we'll use the eight-core / sixteen threads Core i9 9900K through our benchmark paces. You'll be able to tweak this proc towards at least 5.0 GHz on all eight cores with this motherboard. So yeah, the Z390 AORUS Master has 12 IR Digital VRMs, actually 12 IR3553 40A MOSFETs and 6 IR3599 Phase Doublers. It has been embedded with four DDR4 DIMM slots offering frequencies of 4266 MHz (OC) on the AORUS Z390 Master. Storage includes six SATA III ports as well as three M2 slots. All three M.2 slots have an AORUS M.2 shield to cool the, and they look pretty sweet alright. A single Gigabit jack is embedded (Intel) however proper WIFI has been embedded, 2x2 802.11ac connection with a possible 1.73 Gb/s throughput. The board as stated is positioned in that higher-end region of what is considered the mainstream desktop segment, Realtek 1220 gets supplemented by an ESS Audio DAC and WIMA filters. Have a peek and then let's head onwards into the review my man.