Gigabyte Z690 AORUS XTREME Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

The Gigabyte Z690 AORUS XTREME really is something to behold. Actually, it’s also difficult to hold, as this is just about the heaviest motherboard I’ve ever handled. That’s not all that surprising though, as it has some truly staggering amounts of metal bolted to it.

The star of the show has to be the mighty VRM configuration, offering up a 20+1+2 Direct Digital VRM Design that’s sure to impress. However, it’s the VRM heatsinks that really fill me with confidence, as the Fins Array III design offers significantly more surface area than the solid blocks we often see. There’s a much larger heatsink on the left too, but that chunky heatpipe will ensure a more even heat distribution.

The board uses premium Tantalum Polymer Capacitors throughout.

Power comes from a pair of 8-pin PSU headers, both of which feature extra armour and shielding too.

Z690 does support DDR4, but this is a premium board, so it comes with the latest DDR5 slots. These support DDR5 XMP 3.0 up to 6600MHz but certainly far beyond that with overclocking.

Tucked into the corner, there’s a small LED display for the BIOS debug, as well as built-in controls for those using this on a test bench.

There are two full-size PCIe 5.0 slots on this motherboard, giving you some solid future-proofing for upcoming expansion cards. Both of the slots feature a new stainless steel shielding/armoured design. There’s also an external Turbo B clock for PCIe 5.0 overclocking, and PCIe 5.0 Active Switches so you can switch PCIe 5.0 x16 into PCIe 5.0 x8/x8 with a strengthened signal.

Cable routing should be a breeze with this board too, thanks to 90-degree mounted connectors. I love that shroud over the 24-pin too, it just looks cool!

Actually, all of the connectors are all under a shroud, keeping things looking super sharp.

The top M.2 mount comes with Thermal Guard Xtreme, and as you can see, it looks like total overkill for even the hottest running M.2 you could find. equipping with “GPU cooler level technology” according to Gigabyte, including Fins-Array, massive Heatpipes, NanoCarbon coatings, all to ensure SSD throttle-free performance.

Of course, other M.2 mounts are hardly slumming it, with that enormous armoured body forming additional heatsinks for the drive mounts below it.

The rear I/O is stunning, offering both 2.5 GbE and 10 GbE LAN, as well as the latest Intel WiFi 6 for truly awesome networking. There are 10 USB ports, all running the latest USB 3.2 Gen 2, but there’s also a pair of the latest Thunderbolt 4 ports, running at a staggering 40 Gb/s each, while also supporting USB4, DisplayPort 1.4a, two 4K60 or one 8K60 display each and Power Delivery 2.0… Nice!

The rear of the motherboard features a huge piece of armour, providing a little more cooling for the PCB. However, it’s real purpose is so those enormous heatsinks can be secured to the backplate, as fitting them direct to the PCB would likely snap the board in two due to the weight of it all.