Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master
Can a $1,000 board actually be relatively reasonably priced? $1,029 | www.gigabyte.com
Gigabyte’s Z790 Aorus Master is the most expensive board we’ve got in this roundup, and it definitely looks the part. At $1,029 it’s not actually overly expensive compared to the X670E alternatives, and its price competitive with the other makers’ high end Z790 boards.
The Aorus Master is an extended ATX motherboard, meaning it is wider than usual and care needs to be taken to be sure it fits in your case. Gigabyte has gone for black and grey theme with just a splash of Aorus RGB atop the I/O shield. The heatsinks look and feel fantastic. Gigabyte says they are ‘nanocarbon’ coated. Thankfully the
underlying heatsink retains Gigabyte’s excellent fin design, which means more surface area and better cooling.
The Master’s VRM is excellent, as you’d expect from a board that’s expected to power overclocked 13900K’s. a 20+1+2 phase VRM with 105A stages will happily provide juice for ln2 overclockers. Until we see the likes of the Aorus Tachyon or Asus Apex, this is likely to be about as good as it gets, VRM wise. And it runs cool too. With our 13900K set to unlimited power, it peaked at 57 degrees.
Gigabyte opted to include support for a PCIe 5.0 SSD, though like all Z790 boards, it necessitates dropping the primary PCIe slot down to 8x. The primary M.2 slot is cooled by a very large heatsink, and indicators are that it will be needed when hot PCIe 5.0 drives arrive in 2023. There are five M.2 slots in total, with the remaining four supporting PCIe 4.0. The board includes four SATA ports. Six would be more appropriate for a $1,000+ board.
If you need a lot of USB ports, look no further. There are no less than 14 on the back panel alone. There’s two 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C and a Gen 1 Type-C. Joining these are seven Gen 2 and four Gen 1 ports. Thunderbolt 4 or USB 4 would be nice, but even at this price, you can’t have everything compared to a board at $1,500 or more.
The Master includes 10G LAN and Killer Wi-Fi 6E. We love to see 10G and hope it trickles down to cheaper boards in the future. The board includes ALC1220-VB audio which feels like last gen, though it’s a strong implementation with Gigabyte’s reliable choice of components, including an ESS ES9118 DAC.
At the time of writing, Gigabyte was set to release an ‘instant 6GHz’ option for 13900K owners. That will be interesting to see in action, though you’ll need top spec cooling or low ambient temperatures for that to be successful.
The Z790 Aorus Master comes with a good, but not excellent spec, as do many other boards in this price range. It depends on how you weigh certain features. The Aorus has 10G LAN, but omits USB 4 or Thunderbolt and along with the use of ALC1220, it seems like more of a Z690 generation board. In fact, the toughest competition for the Z790 Aorus Master might be the Z690 Aorus Master. It’s a couple of hundred dollars cheaper and apart from the PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot, it seems very similar.
But in the end, the Z790 Master is a strong one and unless you need a specific feature that’s exclusive to flagship boards, it doesn’t disappoint.
The Z790 Aorus Master is a high quality offering, but it feels like a Z690 V2.0 board rather than something that’s truly next gen. ------
Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master; LGA1700 socket; 1x PCIe 5.0 M.2, 4x PCIe 4.0 M.2; 4x SATA; Up to 3x USB 3.2 Gen2x2, 8x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 8x USB 3.1 Gen 1, 4x USB 2.0; 1x DP 1.2 Killer AX1690 Wi-Fi 6E; Marvell AQtion 10G LAN; Realtek ALC 1220-VB 7.1 Channel HD Audio; E-ATX Form Factor.