GIGABYTE Z490 Aorus Master Motherboard Review: Clawing at the Competition

Board Features

The GIGABYTE Z490 Aorus Master is an ATX motherboard representing one of its most premium models in the current Aorus branded Z490 range. It has three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots that operate at x16 and x8/x8/+x4, with three PCIe 3.0 M.2 slots. Two of the M.2 slots can accommodate SATA drives, with six SATA ports supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. Four memory slots can accommodate a maximum capacity of up to 128 GB, with supported speeds of up to DDR4-5000. For cooling, the Z490 Aorus Master has plenty with a total of seven 4-pin headers. These are split into one dedicated to a CPU fan, one for a water cooling CPU fan, and six for chassis fans, with two of them doubling up as water pump headers.

The rear panel has a large selection of USB connectivity, with three USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and four USB 2.0 ports. There are five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF output powered by a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec, with an ESS Sabre ES9118EQ DAC for good measure. Users looking at using Intel's integrated graphics have a single HDMI 1.4 video output, while GIGABYTE also includes a clear CMOS and QFlash BIOS button. The board also includes premium networking, with an Intel i225-V 2.5 GbE controller and an Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 CNVi module. This also provides compatibility with BT 5.1 devices.

Test Bed

As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.

Hardware Providers for CPU and Motherboard Reviews
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