Gigabyte has announced its flagship Z390 Aorus Xtreme overclocking-centric motherboard.
The motherboard manufacturer designed the motherboard squeeze all the performance out of Intel’s latest 9th generation Core processors, more specifically, the Intel Core i9-9900K.
The Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme is an all black E-ATX motherboard with heat sinks sporting RGB Fusion lighting. The rear is protected by an aluminum base plate with a nanocarbon coating to improve thermal conductivity.
The Z390 Aorus Xtreme hascomes with 16-phase power delivery subsystem built on top of an eight-layer 2x copper PCB for enhanced overclocking.
The processor draws power from two 8-pin EPS connectors. There’s a neat area on the motherboard called OC Touch Panel that packs a on buttons and switches to provide on-the-fly tuning.
There is also four DDR4 memory slots allow users to run up to 64GB of RAM, and Gigabyte guarantees support for DDR4 speeds up to 4,266MHz and beyond as long as the processor’s IMC (integrated memory controller) can support it
On the the Storagefront, there are six SATA III ports and three PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots with passive heat sinks.
Plus the motherboard has three PCIe 3.0 x16 slots and supports two-way SLI and three-way CrossFire graphics card configurations. The x16 slots are accompanied by a pair of PCIe 2.0 x1 slots.
Both the memory slots and PCIe 3.0 x16 slots have stainless steel shielding to prevent PCB distortion.
There are eight 4-pin fan headers and eight temperature sensors. Nevertheless, Gigabyte also includes a fan controller, which the company has dubbed the RGB Fan Commander, that adds eight more fan headers and RGB LED headers to the mix. Users can control the aforementioned headers and sensors through Gigabyte’s renewed Smart Fan 5 software.
The motherboard carries two Ethernet ports: a Gigabit port based on the Intel I219-V controller and a 10 Gigabit port from the Aquantia AQC107 controller. And for those who fancy wireless networking over a cable connection, the Z390 Aorus Xtreme comes equipped with a 2×2 802.11ac wireless and Bluetooth 5 combo. On the USB front, the motherboard is decked out with two Thunderbolt 3 ports with USB 3.1 Gen 2 support, four USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A ports, two USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports and two old school USB 2.0 ports.
Tthe motherboard’s audio system is based on Realtek’s ALC1220 codec, Gigabyte has added a few pieces to spice things up, such as an ESS ES9018K2M Sabre DAC (digital-to-analog converter), Texas Instruments OPA1622 SoundPlus audio operational amplifier and audiophile-grade Japanese Nichicon Fine Gold capacitors and German WIMA capacitors.
Gigabyte hasn’t disclosed the Z390 Aorus Xtreme’s pricing or availability.
