Gigabyte Z490 AORUS Master Motherboard Review

Sitting high up in the Gigabyte AORUS motherboard range, you’ll find the mighty Gigabyte Z490 AORUS Master, one of their flagship motherboards for the enthusiast gaming and overclocking market. Of course, it’s not quite as extreme as they, erm, XTREME, but it’s certainly up there in terms of build quality, features, and style. While it is an enthusiast board, it’s firmly planted in the gaming market too, ensuring you get the absolutely best out of your hardware for better FPS, and that’s what we all want really.

Gigabyte Z490 AORUS Master Motherboard

It comes equipped with a robust Digital Power Design, built onto a 6-layer PCB, with double copper for improved conductivity, and it’s PCIe 4.0 ready, albeit not all of the CPUs will be, so be sure to check that one out. However, with shielded and armoured memory, PCIe lanes, M.2 mounts and more, it’s sure to be a robust configuration. You also get fantastic connectivity right out of the box, thanks to 2.5 GbE LAN, Intel WiFi 6 802.11ax, ESS SABRE DAC Audio and so much more!

Features

• Supports 10th Gen Intel^® Core™ Series Processors
• Dual Channel Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 4 DIMMs
• Intel^® Optane™ Memory Ready
• 14 Phase Digital VRM Solution with 90A Smart Power Stage and Tantalum Polymer Capacitors Array
• Shielded Memory Routing for Better Memory Overclocking
• Newly Invented Thermal Design with Fins-Array II Heatsink and Direct Touch Heatpipe II
• Onboard Intel^® WiFi 6 802.11ax 2T2R & BT5 with AORUS Antenna
• 125dB SNR AMP-UP Audio with High-End ESS SABRE 9118 DAC, ALC1220 and WIMA Audio Capacitors
• Blazing Fast Intel^® 2.5GbE LAN with cFosSpeed
• USB TurboCharger for Mobile Device Fast Charge Support
• Triple Ultra-Fast NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 with Thermal Guards II
• RGB FUSION 2.0 with Multi-Zone Addressable LED Light Show Design, Support Addressable LED & RGB LED Strips
• Smart Fan 5 Features Multiple Temperature Sensors , Hybrid Fan Headers with FAN STOP and Noise Detection
• Q-Flash Plus Update BIOS without Installing the CPU, Memory and Graphics Card

What AORUS Had to Say

“GIGABYTE understands that our customer won’t stop chasing better computer performance, and strive to deliver that in our products. For the Z490 series, protective and optimized memory trace enhance the performance; faster read and write speed save time and improve efficiency; and generous M.2 Storage with thermal guards ensure unthrottled read and write performance. Future upgrades to the Z490 are made possible by the use of PCIe 4.0-ready components.” – AORUS

Z490 Motherboard Reviews

Of course, today is the launch of the new Z490 motherboards as well as the new 10th Gen CPUs from Intel. Check out all of our Z490 reviews below.