Gigabyte @ Computex 2023

Gigabyte is one of the biggest and the best for high-end PC hardware, from gamers to workstations, to home and the office, they’ve got a lot of something for everyone these days. While Gigabyte is already doing great things with the Intel Z790 chipset, it seems they’re far from done yet, as they rolled out a refresh on the chipset with their Gigabyte Z790 AORUS XTREME X motherboard.

The board is an absolute beast, sporting more armour than Iron Man, as well as the 90-degree rotated connectors, making it one of the cleanest-looking motherboards on the market. There’s even a shroud right along the top edge of the board, which is something I’ve never seen before. Furthermore, that may be one of the most aggressive and large M.2 heatsinks I’ve ever seen on a motherboard from the factory.

the real star is this monitor though, a large LCD display which can show videos, system information, I/O and more. It’s also a total pain in the arse to photograph in this dark room with bright chandelier lighting, damn you Gigabyte!!! It looks great in person though, honestly.

The board seems to be the first to sport WiFi 7 too, not that I suspect many even have the (rather expensive) WiFi 7 routers to connect to it, but if you do, oh boy will this be fast! Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if suspiciously little changed between the design we see here and the 14th Gen motherboards.

The Windforce Bionic Shark Fan GPU design was on show too, and the design pretty much speaks for itself here, with a newly designed fan on the heatsink.

It looks amazing, but aesthetics aside, it’s been done for performance, and is said to decrease noise levels by 3dB! Plus also increase the static air pressure by 30%!

But again, it looks great too, so win-win.

This does seem to be just a prototype right now, but I hope to see this on the market soon, as I’m eager to test it out.

I’ve seen a few of these at the show, with brands pairing up a new motherboard with the cable headers on the read of the PCB and a new case to accommodate it. Well, it’s rare, but Gigabyte does make a few PC cases from time to time, and that’s exactly what we have here, a rear-mounting motherboard in their new case!

The end result? A cable-free PC build, or at least, a build where all the cables are out of sight. I think it looks really weird, but I do like it, and I suspect we’ll see many more like it in the coming years.