Gigabyte Z490 AORUS PRO AX Motherboard Review

I know many of our readers will want to see the performance of the AORUS XTREME or even the flagships from ASUS, MSI and others. However, in the real world, very few people actually buy those motherboards. They’re epic, but they’re expensive and overkill for most. The Z490 AORUS Pro is like the entry-level model of a supercar. The cheapest Ferrari is still a Ferrari. It gives you 90%+ of the thrills of the most extreme motherboard at a much more sensible price point. With that in mind, the Pro AX is one of the boards I’m looking forward to the most.

Gigabyte Z490 AORUS Pro AX Motherboard

It may not be the flagship, but it’s hardly sparsely equipped. It comes with a 12 Phases Digital VRM running 55A chokes. There is both armour and shielding on all the major components and slots, as well as their fantastic Fins-Array II and Heatpipe II cooling systems. You’ve got ultra-fast WiFi, 2.5 GbE networking, and RGB. Connectivity does look particularly good though, with Optane, triple M.2 mounts, and even ALC1220-VB audio outputs too.

Features

• Supports 10th Gen Intel^® Core™ Series Processors
• Dual Channel Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 4 DIMMs
• Intel^® Optane™ Memory Ready
• Direct 12 Phases Digital VRM Solution with 55A DrMOS
• Shielded Memory Routing for Better Memory Overclocking
• Fins-Array II Heatsink and Direct Touch Heatpipe II
• Onboard Intel^® WiFi 6 802.11ax 2T2R & BT5 with AORUS Antenna
• AMP-UP Audio with ALC1220-VB and WIMA for Rear 120dB SNR
• Blazing Fast Intel^® 2.5GbE LAN with cFosSpeed
• Dual Ultra-Fast NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 with Thermal Guards
• 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
• Q-Flash Plus Update BIOS without Installing the CPU, Memory and Graphics Card

What AORUS Had to Say

Z490 AORUS PRO AX motherboard uses a 12+1 phases digital CPU power design which includes both digital PWM Controller and DrMOS. These 100% digital controller and additional 8+4 Solid-pin CPU Power Connectors offer incredible precision in delivering power to the motherboard’s most power-hungry and energy-sensitive components, allowing enthusiasts to get the absolute maximum performance from the new Intel 10-core CPU. – 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.

A Closer Look

The Aorus Pro AX is a great looking motherboard, with a really clean layout and a design that packs a lot in, but manages to not look overly cluttered. It does pack in some RGB lighting, but it’s pretty much all matte grey and black throughout.

The CPU shouldn’t have any issues with overclocking, thanks to a competitive Direct 12 Phase Digital Power Design with 55A DrMOS. Plus, you get some pretty legit looking heat skins with a thick heat pipe joining them. They use actual fins rather than just a large block. That’s on top of a 6-layer PCB which uses 2x copper for better conductivity.

Power comes from an 8-pin header at the top, with an optional 4-pin for added voltage stability. It even comes with metal trim to armour the headers.

Moving alone, you’ll find all of the memory slots are fully armoured too.

There are three full-size PCI lanes, as well as two 1x lanes. As you can see, the top two are fully armoured, so they’ll easily support the weight of high-end GPUs.

There are two armoured M.2 mounts on offer too, plus one above the PCIe lanes without armour. I’m not sure why the top one doesn’t have a heatsink though, but if you’re buying something like the AORUS RGB 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD, you won’t need one anyway.

The audio hardware is pretty robust on this motherboard too, and there’s a bank of gold capacity’s on show down here. I’m conflicted though, should they show these or hide them to keep that monochrome look intact?

The triple M.2 mounts are supported by an additional 3 x SATA slots on the right side.

If you’re the person who always forgets the rear I/O panel, you’ll be glad to see that its pre-installed. There’s a load of USB ports here too, so hooking up peripherals and storage devices should be a breeze. You even get USB Type-C, HDMI, 2.5 GbE LAN, and WiFi 6, so connectivity should not be an issue.

How We Test

Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to disclose vital information regarding the benchmarking process so that readers can quantify the results and attempt to replicate them using their hardware. When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of motherboard, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there’s always a margin for error when using any software. Therefore, your experience may vary.

Testing Your Own System

We typically focus on commonly available benchmarks so that you too can run the same benchmarks on your own system. We hope this makes it easy for our readers to gauge the performance improvement available to them when they upgrade their own systems.

Gaming Tests

All games are run at their specified resolutions using the “high” settings or equivalent. We avoid using the Ultra settings as these often offer diminishing returns for performance vs visuals.

Test Benches

Comet Lake S

Coffee Lake

Kaby Lake

LGA 2066

Zen 2

Zen

Synthetic Benchmarks

Online Benchmarks

Compression & Rendering

Memory

Gaming Performance

Power Consumption

Overclocking

It seems that all of the Intel Z490 chipset motherboards come with very comprehensive VRM configurations and power delivery. As such, every board we tested was able to hit 5.2 GHz on all cores. We know the CPUs will go higher, but for your average consumer, a simple multiplier adjustment and voltage setting seems to be all you’ll need to push the new Intel CPUs.

The Gigabyte Z490 AORUS PRO AX Motherboard reached 5.2 GHz with the BIOS voltage set to 1.325v.

How Much Does it Cost?

The Gigabyte Z490 AORUS PRO AX Motherboard is availble right now from Amazon in the UK for £299.99, making it a somewhat mid-to-high budget board. That’s about what we expected, but still looks like great value given the amount of premium features on offer.

Overview

This board fits so snug between the affordable models and the XTREME edition flagship board. It’s got a heck of a lot of features that are sure to appeal to a huge number of gamers and PC enthusiasts in general, but it’s still less than half the price of the flagship models. Like most of the others, it is more expensive than it’s Z390 counterpart was at launch.

Build Quality & Design

AORUS has really put in the effort to make a great looking board here. For Gigabyte fans, the design is familiar, it’s a steady evolution of the same design, but it has certainly gotten better with age. It looks more professional and refined now, because it is. They’ve upgrade the hardware too, better VRM heatsinks and more fins means much improved cooling performance for the VRM. Plus, there’s larger heatsinks on the M.2 covers, chipset, and all important hardware is armoured/shielded too.

Performance

While the performance difference between all the new Z490 motherboard is marginal, it’s still pretty fantastic overall. We’re really impressed with the i9-10900K and the AX has proven to be a fantastic motherboard for it too. There’s a 12+2 Power Phase design which is plenty for any of the new Intel CPUs, it’ll drive that through 55A Power Stages from the 8+4 Solid Pin Connectors. The addition of direct-touch heat pipes connecting both the VRM cooling fins all help to ensure you can max that CPU all day long.

Added Value

With support for 128GB of DDR4 5000MHz, 3 x 16 PCIe slots, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type C, and Gen 1, Thunderbolt, and 3 x M.2 mounts on offer, you’ll not be left wanting for more when you build your new PC. Of course, it also comes with the fantastic ALC1220-VB audio, Intel WiFi 6, and Intel 2.5GbE LAN, giving you a fantastic suite of connectivity.

Should I Buy One?

This mother really is in the sweetspot for most consumers. For a high-end gaming PC, workstation, rendering rig, whatever, it has a little bit of something for everyone. Furthermore, it does it with a great design, fantastic build quality and a well balanced price tag.