Gigabyte Z790 AORUS MASTER X DDR5 E-ATX Motherboard Review

When it comes to high-end motherboards, AORUS are often at the top of the list, ranking against the best of the best from ASUS, MSI and the other super-board manufacturers. Of course, AORUS comes from Gigabyte and is their ultra-high-end enthusiast product range, covering all their flagship models. The Aorus Master X is certainly up there too, offering a plethora of enthusiast-friendly features to make it an overclocking beast, with lots of ultra-fast connectivity to get the best from your high-end gaming system or workstation. Z790 Aorus Master X Features Supports Intel Core 14th and 13th processors Digital direct 20+1+2 phases VRM solution Dual Channel DDR5: 4*DIMMs with XMP 3.0 memory module support PCIe UD Slot X: PCIe 5.0 x16 slot with 10X strength for graphics card EZ-Latch Click: M.2 heatsinks with screwless design EZ-Latch Plus: PCIe 5.0 x16 slot & M.2 slots with quick-release design UC BIOS: User-centred intuitive UX with Quick Access function Ultra-Fast Storage: 5*M.2 slots, including 1* PCIe 5.0 x4 Efficient Overall Thermal: VRM Thermal Armor Fins-Array & M.2 Thermal Guard XL Fast Networking: 10GbE LAN & Wi-Fi 7 with Ultra-high gain antenna Extended Connectivity: DP, Front USB-C 10Gb/s, Front & Dual Rear USB-C 20Gb/s DTS:X® Ultra Audio: ALC1220 & Rear ESS SABRE Hi-Fi 9118 DAC For in-depth features and specifications, please visit the official Z790 AORUS Master X product page here. What Gigabyte Aorus Had to Say X marks the 14th generation! Introducing the AORUS Z790 X Gen Motherboards, the most powerful platforms ever built for the Intel® Core™ 14th Gen processors. With the leading performance in DDR5 memory, the upgraded DIY-friendly innovations, and the all-new BIOS redesigned as user-centred, the AORUS Z790 X Gen Motherboards are built to fully unleash the next-gen power. A Closer Look This is a pretty amazing-looking motherboard, with a mixture of reflective and matte finishes that make it both stand out aesthetically, while also being a little understated, as most of the hardware is hiding under thick armour. The armour is aesthetically pleasing, but it's 100% practical too. Take these enormous VRM heatsinks, with a Nanocarbon coating, and a hefty heatpipe linking the two, this is going to ensure you can run the CPU hard for hours on end without overheating the board, or at least, that's what it should do, we'll test that shortly. The CPU headers, the memory, and even the rear I/O are all reinforced and armoured too. I love the matte black finish too, it's meant to help with cooling too, but it just looks cool. The lower half of the board features one massive heatsink, below which you'll find the motherboard chipset, as well as a number of M.2 drive bays. All three of the PCIe slots are armoured, however, there's additional reinforcement on the top slot too. The whole thing is held in place by two pins on the left and a single quick release on the right for easy access. These massive heatsinks all screw through the motherboard, into a thick backplate, which provides additional strength, but also even more surface area for cooling the PCB. There's armour on the DDR5 slots, not that I think it's particularly needed, but it does look good and prevents the board from flexing. There's armour on the 24-pin too, and even a BIOS debug LED, which can help with solving boot issues. While the board does have plenty of M.2, there are only four SATA ports, however, in 2023 and beyond, I suspect that's plenty. There's a huge M.2 heatsink on the primary M.2 slot, with this slot supporting Gen 5 M.2 drives, while the other four support Gen 4 drives. The rear I/O is packed, offering up a huge number of USB ports, with 7 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (red), USB 3.2 Gen 1 (blue), as well as three type-c ports, offering up DisplayPort support, 10GB/s and 20Gb/s connectivity. There's both 10 Gbps Marvell AQtion AQC113C LAN and the latest WiFi 7 too, for ultra-fast networking. With the heatsinks removed, you can see all five M.2 slots, which dominate the lower half of the motherboard. The VRM is certainly robust, with a Digital Direction 20+1+2 phase solution, which certainly explains the need for such a massive VRM heatsink. The heatsinks feature a more robust 12 W/mk thermal pad, with a blue pad on the heat pipes and darker black pads on the aluminium heatsink. How We Test We continue to update our testing methods around once per year. As such, we re-test older hardware to reflect changes over time. These can be driver updates, Windows updates, game patches, and more; all of which have an impact on performance figures. Furthermore, we update our test benches to newer and more relevant hardware. This means that our new reviews aren’t always comparable to those of older reviews, so please compare the testing methodology on older reviews should you be trying to compare them with newer ones. Replicate Our Results When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory and are kept as simple as possible, although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of a graphics card, CPU, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there’s always a margin for error when using any software. Links are provided below, as well as the settings we use. We encourage you to not just look at how one product compares to any other, but how it compares to your own. If you’re looking to build a new system, you should benchmark your current PC using the benchmarks available to you. You should then look at the percentage improvement from your current hardware to the hardware tested here to give you a ballpark figure of how much of an upgrade this will provide you with. Motherboard Test Systems Test System (AM5) Motherboard Changes Per Review Review Buy Now Processor AMD Ryzen 9 7900X GPU Zotac RTX 3090 Trinity Review Buy Now RAM Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR5 32GB 5200MHz Review Buy Now CPU Cooler NZXT Kraken Z73 RGB Buy Now Power Supply NZXT C1000 Gold Review Buy Now Storage Seagate FIRECUDA 530 1TB Review Buy Now Chassis NZXT H7 Flow Review Buy Now OS Windows 11 Pro Version 21H2 Drivers Graphics: 516.94 Test System (AM4) Motherboard Changes Per Review Buy Now Processor AMD Ryzen 9 5950X GPU Zotac RTX 3090 Trinity Review Buy Now RAM Kingston Fury Renegade DDR4 32GB 3600MHz Review Buy Now CPU Cooler NZXT Kraken Z73 RGB Buy Now Power Supply NZXT C1000 Gold Review Buy Now Storage Seagate FIRECUDA 530 1TB Review Buy Now Chassis NZXT H7 Flow Review Buy Now OS Windows 11 Pro Version 21H2 Drivers Graphics: 516.94 Test System (Z690) Motherboard Changes Per Review Review Buy Now Processor Intel Core i9 12900K GPU Zotac RTX 3090 Trinity Review Buy Now RAM Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR5 32GB 5200MHz Review Buy Now CPU Cooler NZXT Kraken Z73 RGB Buy Now Power Supply NZXT C1000 Gold Review Buy Now Storage Seagate FIRECUDA 530 1TB Review Buy Now Chassis NZXT H7 Flow Review Buy Now OS Windows 11 Pro Version 21H2 Drivers Graphics: 516.94 Test System (Z590) Motherboard Changes Per Review Review Buy Now Processor Intel Core i9 11900K GPU Zotac RTX 3090 Trinity Review Buy Now RAM Kingston Fury Renegade DDR4 32GB 3600MHz Review Buy Now CPU Cooler NZXT Kraken Z73 RGB Buy Now Power Supply NZXT C1000 Gold Review Buy Now Storage Seagate FIRECUDA 530 1TB Review Buy Now Chassis NZXT H7 Flow Review Buy Now OS Windows 11 Pro Version 21H2 Drivers Graphics: 516.94 Additional Hardware ElmorLabs PMD-USB Power Measurement Device With USB (link) Software We use a variety of software from different developers to assist in our testing and to give us the most consistent results possible. Some applications are specifically used for testing, while others are simply used for monitoring and to aid us in making sure that our results are as accurate as possible. Software Used 3DMark FireStrike & TimeSpy (download) AIDA64 (download) CapFrameX 1.6.9 (download) Cinebench R23 (download) CPU-Z (download) HWMonitor (download) PCMark 10 Express (download) Super PI 2.1 WP (download) Gaming To gauge performance levels which are easily reproduced time after time, by both ourselves and our readers, we now stick strictly to games' default profiles. Given how powerful most modern cards are getting, we've begun using more demanding profiles for most games, but will otherwise state on a per-game basis if we use other profiles beyond High, Ultra, Maximum or their respective equivalent at all resolutions. V-Sync is always disabled in our testing, and all FPS caps that can be removed are. We also enable XMP and Resizable bar technology across all platforms to keep things as fair as possible. Games While we test a lot of games, it's not possible to display all of the data on the website or in our videos. Instead, we include access to all of our testing data for our Patreon members (link), where members get a ton of other benefits as well. What we do, however, is display charts for averages across all game titles to give a better picture of performance across all titles tested. Cyberpunk 2077 Horizon Zero Dawn Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 Resolutions 1080p (Full HD) Some tests will also include features such as NVIDIA DLSS and Ray Tracing. However, these will be clearly labelled and may only appear in reviews for graphics cards that support those features. Power Consumption Not being content on simply reading total system power draw at both idle, we now have the ability thanks to the ElmorLabs PMD-USB device that allows us to measure power draw directly through the EPS power connectors. We test at idle, during gaming load, of which we measure drawing a run of Cyberpunk 2077 and during Cinebench R23 at load too. We also use a GW-Instek GPM-8212 power meter to measure the complete system power at the wall to get an idea of how each motherboard compares to one another. VRM Temperatures We take temperature readings after 10 minutes of desktop idle with no background programs running, then take the recorded maximum delivered during the same runs as when we measure power consumption, being during our Cyberpunk 2033 run, and during Cinebench R23 at load too. 3DMark Timespy Extreme Time Spy Extreme is a new 4K DirectX 12 benchmark test, available in 3DMark Advanced and Professional Editions. You don’t need a 4K monitor to run it, but you will need a GPU with at least 4 GB of dedicated memory. With its 4K Ultra HD rendering resolution, Time Spy Extreme is an ideal benchmark test for the latest high-end graphics cards. The CPU test has been redesigned to let processors with 8 or more cores perform to their full potential 3DMark is available on Steam here. The Master X is an expensive board, but well, so are most of the boards we've tested. However, it holds its own, with a score of 8987 points overall, and a strong CPU score of 8946, which is firmly on par with other high-end boards. PCMark 10 Express PCMark 10 features a comprehensive set of tests that cover the wide variety of tasks performed in the modern workplace. With a range of performance tests, custom run options, Battery Life Profile, and new Storage benchmarks, PCMark 10 is the complete PC benchmark for the modern office. Available now on Steam. In PCMark 10 Express, all the boards scored broadly similar, with the Master X hitting 6507, which is certainly competitive and tells us there are no unwanted bottlenecks here. Super PI 2.1 WP Super PI is a single-threaded benchmark that calculates pi to a specific number of digits. It uses the Gauss-Legendre algorithm and is a Windows port of a program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute pi to 232 digits Available now on Super PI. This is a great test for stressing the CPU and VRM, and while not as fast as I would have liked at 383 seconds, it's well within what we expect to see from this CPU. Cinebench R23 Cinebench is a real-world cross-platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s hardware capabilities. Improvements to Cinebench Release 23 reflect the overall advancements to CPU and rendering technology in recent years, providing a more accurate measurement of Cinema 4D’s ability to take advantage of multiple CPU cores and modern processor features available to the average user. Best of all: It’s free. Available now on Maxon. The single-core speeds are right on track hitting just over 1900, and again, the multi-core performance is right on track with similarly high-end motherboards such as the AORUS Z790 Pro X. AIDA64 AIDA64 is a system information, diagnostics, and auditing application developed by FinalWire Ltd that runs on Windows, Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Tizen, Chrome OS and Sailfish OS operating systems. It displays detailed information on the components of a computer. Available now on AIDA64. Again, it seems the performance on this motherboard is remarkably consistent, albeit it did deliver the fastest memory write times, but only by a small margin, and the latency is pretty much the average of all the boards, but overall still quite low, which is great to see. Cyberpunk 2077 Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure RPG set in the megalopolis of Night City, where you play as a cyberpunk mercenary wrapped up in a do-or-die fight for survival. Improved and featuring all-new free additional content, customize your character and playstyle as you take on jobs, build a reputation, and unlock upgrades. The relationships you forge and the choices you make will shape the story and the world around you. Legends are made here. What will yours be? Available now on Steam. When it comes to gaming, we're off to a great start, with the second highest score in Cyberpunk, delivering 112 FPS average, with 82 FPS 1% lows, making for a nice and smooth gaming experience. Horizon Zero Dawn Experience Aloy’s entire legendary quest to unravel the mysteries of a world ruled by deadly Machines. An outcast from her tribe, the young hunter fights to uncover her past, discover her destiny… and stop a catastrophic threat to the future. Unleash devastating, tactical attacks against unique Machines and rival tribes as you explore an open world teeming with wildlife and danger. Horizon Zero Dawn is a multi-award-winning action role-playing game – and this Complete Edition for PC includes the huge expansion The Frozen Wilds, featuring new lands, skills, weapons and Machines. Available now on Steam. Horizon Zero Dawn runs great, with the Master X leading the pack, with the highest average frame rate of 188 FPS, as well as the highest 1% lows of 150 FPS. Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered Developed by Insomniac Games in collaboration with Marvel, and optimized for PC by Nixxes Software, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered on PC introduces an experienced Peter Parker who’s fighting big crime and iconic villains in Marvel’s New York. At the same time, he’s struggling to balance his chaotic personal life and career while the fate of Marvel’s New York rests upon his shoulders. Available now on Steam. While not the fastest in Spider-Man Remastered, it's certainly competitive, hitting a respectable 151 FPS on average, with 110 FPS 1% lows. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 The Microsoft Flight Simulator Game of the Year (GOTY) Edition celebrates all the positive feedback, reviews and awards garnered, but it is also a “Thank You” to our fans – new and old – that have made Microsoft Flight Simulator such a phenomenon. Best of all, the Microsoft Flight Simulator Game of the Year Edition will be available as a free update for existing players on PC. Available now on Steam. Flight Simulator is certainly one of the most demanding games we've ever used as a benchmark, but this Master X scored joint first place with 83 FPS average, and held nicely above 60 FPS at all times with 63 FPS 1% lows. Boot Time Another pleasant surprise is a faster boot time, coming in at just 29 seconds, which is surprising as these more feature-rich boards tend to take a lot longer to post. The other key areas that are worth focussing on though comes down to VRM temperatures, which can differ wildly depending on the amount, the capacity of the current that can pass through them, and of course how the various heatsinks handle that power, which in turn, creates heat. VRM Temperatures Now we're getting into the really heavy stuff, and while the initial VRM temperature seemed like it was going to get quite hot quite fast, that was simply not the case. The VRM got above 45 very quickly, settled around 47c within just a few minutes, and after an hour of constant stress, the temperature hadn't gone up. If you wonder why the heatsinks look so bad-ass, this is why, this board will sit at 100% load all day long and not break a sweat. Power Consumption I expected the power consumption to be higher than this, usually bigger VRM means more power is needed, but this is very competitive at just 362w while using 100% CPU load, especially compared to the Apex Encore, which just seems to be greedy when it comes to power consumption. How Much Does It Cost? The Gigabyte Intel Z790 AORUS MASTER X DDR5 PCIe 5.0 E-ATX Motherboard isn't cheap, coming in at £609.98 at the time of writing. That is a lot, but not exactly uncommon for these high-end boards either. Why is it so much? Well, the massive amount of metals on the board certainly adds to the cost, with some significant heatsinks and a full backplate cooling all major components. Then there's the extensive connectivity, five M.2 slots, armour on all hardware slots, and a plethora of I/O that don't come free or cheap. If you're not going to use nearly all of that, it would be wise to invest in a model further down the Aorus range. Overview It's hard not to love what Gigabyte has done here, albeit, it's pretty much unheard of for an AORUS motherboard not to leave a good impression. For your typical gaming PC, it's total overkill, but for extreme systems and content creators, it certainly has a lot to offer. The VRM and the heatsinks used to cool them are some of the best I've ever tested. They ran cool enough to safely touch even after an hour of 100% CPU load in Prime95. You can max your CPU all day long rendering video and stability just isn't going to be an issue, which is great. Speaking of video rendering, the rear I/O is pretty extreme on this motherboard, offering three Type-C connections with super fast transfer speeds that are ideal for those loading and unloading massive data sets. We use a lot of external M.2 drives to capture video in 12K, so having a motherboard that can keep up with moving such big files is a real-time saver. Furthermore, there's no Gigabit ethernet here, this board comes out swinging with 10Gbps LAN as standard, and the latest WiFi 7. Moving files around our network to the RAID NVMe NAS over 10GbE and getting the most from multi-gig broadband takes some serious hardware, but the Master X is certainly not going to be the weakest link in that chain. Should I Buy One? When it comes to real-world performance, the Aorus Master X certainly holds its own. In gaming, rendering, office tasks, or anything else really, it set some competitive benchmarks. Sure, it's not much faster than some less expensive boards, however, keep in mind that it has extremely robust build quality, much higher storage and connectivity capabilities, and heavy-duty VRM and cooling solutions that mean that while you can get similar performance for less money, the Aorus Master X will deliver that performance 24/7 even under sustained high-loads, while lesser boards will overheat and throttle your hardware.