Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Pro review - Introduction

Aorus Z390 Pro review
Gigabyte 199 USD/EUR Z390 offering

In this review, we peek at one of the Aorus Pro model Z390 motherboard released by Gigabyte. ready for 8th or 9th Gen processors this board is about performance and decent features at a more comfortable price level. The board has dual ATX connector which should indicate a strong VRM, this motherboard as such has 12+1 digital 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 Pro has seven IR Digital ISL69138 VRMs, 12 SiC634 MOSFETs and six ISL6617APhase Doublers. It has been embedded with four DDR4 DIMM slots offering frequencies of 4266 MHz (OC) on the AORUS Z390 Pro. Storage includes six SATA III ports and two M2 slots. All 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) lacking, however, is WIFI (A WIFI model is available for a tenner extra which is highly recommended to opt). 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.