The Gigabyte/AORUS motherboard lineup will be featuring a total of 13 motherboards. The Z590 AORUS lineup comes with more enthusiast and gaming-specific features than the Gigabyte lineup while the Vision series is more so focused on the content creation segment.
Select AORUS boards would be featuring Tantalum Polymer Capacitors which offer 50% faster recovery from a transient situation, reducing voltage spikes and offering a more stable and efficient power delivery to the CPU. AORUS’s new Xtreme Memory technology includes Shielded Memory Routing which enables more stability and less interference when running high-frequency DDR4 DIMMs on AORUS motherboards. And lastly, we have the updated Direct Touch II & Fins Array II design that adds thicker heat pipes and finned heatsink blocks for higher thermal performance.
The motherboard we got for testing is the AORUS Z590 PRO AX which comes in as a mainstream offering with a price tag of $289.99 US (Newegg). Talking about specs, the motherboard features the LGA 1200 socket which is powered by a 12+1 phase power delivery that makes use of Renesas ISL99390 90A MOSFETs. The motherboard features four DDR4 DIMM slots which can support up to 128 GB capacities with speeds of up to 5400 MHz (OC+). The motherboard has a very futuristic look to it and also features a decent cooling setup on the VRMs which includes heatsinks that are made of proper aluminum fins and connected together through a heat pipe.
AORUS Z590 PRO AX Motherboard Features:
- Supports 11th and 10th Gen Intel Core Series Processors
- Dual Channel Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 4 DIMMs
- Intel Optane Memory Ready
- Direct 12+1 Phases Digital VRM Solution with 90A Smart Power Stage
- Shielded Memory Routing to Avoid Interference
- Advanced Thermal Solution with Fins-Array II Heatsink, Direct Touch Heatpipe II, and Thermal Guard II
- Intel WiFi 6 802.11ax 2T2R & BT5 with AORUS Antenna
- AMP-UP Audio with ALC4080 and WIMA for Rear 120dB SNR
- Blazing Fast Intel 2.5GbE LAN with cFosSpeed
- Triple Ultra-Fast NVMe PCIe 4.0*/3.0 x4 M.2 with Thermal Guards II for extreme RAID Performance
- RGB FUSION 2.0 with Multi-Zone Addressable LED Light Show Design, Support Addressable LED & RGB LED Strips
- Smart Fan 6 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
Storage options include 6 SATA III ports while expansion includes three PCIe 4.0 x16, and four M.2 ports. There are three M.2 slots that run on the PCIe Gen 4.0 protocol while one runs on the PCIe Gen 3.0 protocol via the PCH. All four M.2 slots feature Thermal Guard heatsinks with thermal pad cooling featured underneath them. The PCH heatsink is made up of a metallic grey finish while the IO cover has a matte black finish but does come with RGB LEDs that can be configured through the Gigabyte RGB Fusion software.
For I/O, AORUS features 1 USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (Type-C), 4 USB 3.2 Gen 2 (2 Type-A Rear + 1 Type-C Front), 4 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 4 USB 2.0 ports, Intel I225V 2.5 Gb LAN Port, WiFi 6 (2x antenna ports), 1 RJ-45 port, 1 Display Port 1.4, 1 SPDIF port, and an HD audio jack that is powered by the Realtek ALC4080 codec.
