Gigabyte Z590I AORUS ULTRA Motherboard Review

How Much Does it Cost?

At the time of writing this review, it costs £264/$290 from Amazon UK/US. Having a look around and while options are slim, from what we can see the competitors Z590I boards are more expensive. When it comes to the ITX board’s price, you’ve got to remember they are trying to incorporate most of the features an ATX board would have in a smaller cut-down version. While this is not always possible, this does affect the overall price of ITX boards and is understandable.

Overview

The Gigabyte Z590I AORUS ULTRA packs a lot of features into a very small board. Those looking for an ITX Z590 board will be happy to see it still have two M.2 slots, PCIe 4.0 (when using 11th Gen CPUs) and much more to offer. The board also still remains to look pleasing with everything it has going on. The extra shielding, heatsink and heat pipe will also help to dissipate heat and keep temps as low as possible.

Build Quality & Design

Gigabyte has gone with a 10-layer PCB which is more than you will find on most motherboards, especially mini-ITX ones. Combine this with the 90A Phases, plenty of thermal reducing options and you’ve got yourself a worthy ITX board. We all know AORUS is aimed more at the premium side of things and they surely have not let us down. Trying to fit everything you want on an ITX board is a feat all of its own, but to do that and keep with the high-quality components really shows the lengths Gigabyte went through when designing the Z590I AORUS ULTRA.

Performance

Offering performance similar to what we have seen from full-sized ATX boards, the Z590I AORUS ULTRA is not to be messed with. Again, an ITX board is rather impressive to see there is no real loss in performance when running on default BIOS with only XMP set for our Memory. While overclocking may not yield the best of results, you still will be able to get a mild-overclock on your components should you wish to. Can’t really ask much more than that from an ITX board!

Added Value

This board is designed to be as durable and stable as possible. It comes with a 10-layer PCB, extra shielding on the RAM and PCIe slots. Let us also not forget that though it is ITX, it still has two M.2 drive slots even if one of them has to be on the backside of the motherboard.

Should I Buy One?

If you are after a Z590 based ITX board, I would have no issues recommending the Z590I AORUS ULTRA. Remembering that this is significantly cheaper at the time of review than other ITX boards from competitors and is actually available makes it a good choice. Just make sure to check that it does have all the features you need as, of course, they have been cut down a bit to fit ono the ITX form factor.