GIGABYTEZ690 AORUS PRO (LGA 1700/ Intel Z690/ ATX/ DDR5/ Quad M.2/ PCIe 5.0/ USB 3.2 Gen2X2 Type-C/ WiFi 6/ 2.5GbE LAN/ Gaming Motherboard)

Gaming X Z790 AX DDR5 REVIEW:After even more research I decided to do another upgrade to DDR5 and as a result the Z790 Motherboard. The Z690 Rocks as indicated in the other review and I migrated that board and RAM to my media server. A bit overkill for my Media server but it should last me a few years.With DDR5 prices coming down and supposed benefits I decided to migrate to the Z790. As expected my GPU and Hard drive benchmarks did not change, However my 13700k CPU benchmark has increased from the 45000 range with the Z690 to 49000-51000 with the new Z790.Overall, I am going to recommend the Z790 over the Z690 with or with out DDR5, I will also suggest using DDR5 unless you have some great DDR4 as I did. I had to get some mediocre 5600 CL 28 DDR5 Ram for testing and was able to achieve as good or better performance over my High end DDR4 3600 cl16.Another important note is both boards support 12th gen, 13th gen and the 13th gen refresh which will be the 14th gen processors. There are a few new features/changes on the Z790 BIOS that stand out. There are some additional items you can change like a DDR5 low latency toggle which dropped my latency from around 40 down to 35, also due to speed of the DDR5 RAM, you can only choose Gear 2 or Gear 4. I had trouble testing Gear 4 and had to reset my BIOS. The overall control in the BIOS is great for normal operation as well as anyone wanting to OC.The other big change is Gigabyte has introduced the Control Center overr the older App center/ The new Control center puts RGB fusion, Some OC features, Fan features and most of the App center items into the main Control Center. I can not find the @BIOS utility so I sed the QFlash in Bios for upgrading the BIOS. I also can not find th equvalent of the SIV utility which shows all og your temps on a single screen. The RGB fusion update works like the older RGB Fusion 2. With the Z790. you do have to upgrade to the newer Control Center and cant use the older apps or RGB Fusion.My overall Bench only increase by 2-300 points but the CPU benchmark is the part that stands out. The only images above from the new MOBO is showing the Benchmarks with the CPU highlighting the 49k and tghe RAM spec of 4346. No it wasnt that fun, replacing the MB, redoing cableing, HDs and redoing the AIO, BIOS but it only took me a couple hours because all of the cabling was in the same spot.Its hard to beat the Gaming X Z690 DDR4, but this newer Z790 DDR5 edges it out for performance. Cant wait to get some higher performance DDR5.ORIGINAL Gaming X Z690 DDR4 REVIEW:I have been building PCs for over 30 years. I even used to sell them for about 10 years way in the past as well as full service or fix any ones pc. Just giving you some background. Anyway after many brands, I decided a long time ago that I liked Gigabyte boards the best. So I am already slightly biased. And for my own personal computer builds, I will only use Gigabyte. For price, quality, performance, features and layout, they are top in my opinion. I spend quite a bit of time doing research when I am upgrading. And, I happen to be upgrading from a Gigabyte Gaming X Z390 I59600k. After narrowing it down to a handful of Gigabyte boards I selected this one. This one stood out to me for the 4 NVME slots, as well as the number of USB 3.2 ports and it even came with a 20Gb/s USB C port, plus all the expansion slots can hold the longer internal cards. Plus this handles 12th and 13th gen processors after Bios upgrade. Which the Bios upgrade was super easy. I put the upgrade on a thumb drive, connected a PSU and held the upgrade button and it was upgraded without ever having to turn the computer on or even have a processor in it which I hadnt even selected at the time. The other big selling point was that this board supports DDR4 which I already had 64 gig of DDR4 on the system being replaced. The only thing that I had to get for this system build was the MB, processor and a cpu fan. So sort of a cheap upgrade overall. IMHO, this is the best MOBO at this price point and even better than other boards costing a lot more. The reason I didnt go with the DDR5 version is I already had 64 gig of DDR4. If or when I decide to jump to DDR5, it will probably be time for a new processor or I will just get the DDR5 model and put all my parts on the new MOBO. If interested, after researching processors, I ended up with the I7 13000k. After 2 air cooled cpu fans that worked great, I ended up with a liquid cooled option which was a lot quieter and actually did a better job. If using a 12th or 13th gen processor, make sure you have a good cpu cooling as those run pretty hot. BTW, I like that there are multiple temp sensors on this board that you can monitor. As time and money permit, I will upgrade to NVME 4 and a better graphics card. The BIOS has both an easy and advanced mode as well as some custom Gigabyte features like the Instant 6 MHZ which does some auto overclocking for you. The bios also has a lot of overclocking features if you are into that for gaming. The 9331 score was achieved on initial boot and the higher 9520 was achieved after some minor tweaks. The 9979 was today using my secondary drive and not performing minor tweaks. I also realized and double checked that my old Graphics card actually performs better on this new motherboard by over 1000 points. BONUS! You can spend a lot more money on a lot of other boards, but this one provides the best performance for the dollar at least in my humble opinion.UPDATE: I had to update my case because the only place I could put the AIO was on the bottom with reduced airflow and I had to raise the case up with more fans.. Did not like that set up at all. So I had to rebuild my system again. Normally I just tie back the cables out of the way of fans and everything is hidden behind the case panel. But, the new case had a window as well as better cable management so I spent way more time on the second build. I included some before and after pictures of the Motherboard update which I think does look quite a bit better. I never have really cared about the RGB fans, but now I am exploring the various headers on the MOBO. I like that there are 2 ARGB ports as well as 2 RGB ports on here. And for fun, I did some simple overclocking on the GPU with the standard utilities and enabled the 6Ghz boost mode in the MOBO bios to get the 10351 Bench. I also have been watching board temps as I like things to run cool and now my VRM MOS is down 5 degrees and other sensors are down a few Wish my case had more bays so I could plug more stuff into the motherboard. I love this boardUPDATE2: Got some new ram and tweaked it a bit and also using V11 Beta of the benchmark. Was able to get the 12000 score above at 6 GIG boost. Also, been playing more with the RGB Fusion which has been working great for controlling everything. Also, I was updating the BIOS on another Z690 and it would not boot up. I realized that I had reused the same USB stick from before and so it was flashing the backup BIOS instead of the new BIOS. Apparently when you flash the BIOS with the new version from the USB, it backs up your current BIOS to the USB. So in order to use the USB again, you have to put the new BIOS back on the USB thumbdrive.UDATE 3: Got some new Ram as well as a new 3060 since my 3D benchmark was pretty low with my 1060. Latest Bench is consistent above 14500 with the new GPU as indicated in the new benchmark image.. Its great that the new 14th gen will be able to work on this MB as well when Intel releases that later in the year. So this motherboard will run 12th, 13th and 14th gen processors.

This motherboard did all intended purposes for my first build, it seats all of my components very well and as far as aesthetics go.. it’s fine.The software for driver updates and RGB control is convenient and worked well with my fractal pop air case. Fan controls are also good, no problems there. Bios is functional and has decent tweaking options.For someone building themselves especially the first time, everything is appropriately labeled and it is very easy to get running. The performance after benchmarking was excellent.My only negatives about the motherboard are really the audio performance, the audio is just okay. If you’re someone who prioritizes audio and works with a lot of audio whether it’s through editing/streaming or gaming then you may be wanting more out of the audio. Not that it’s horrendously bad or anything but it’s just basic and something you would’ve expected a little more from out of an aorus elite model especially a z790.Taking into account that you get DDR5 support on this; the price point is good. Some people like DDR5, some don’t, but if you do then you’ll be happy with this motherboard. You also get wifi 6 if you install the kit for that, I didn’t because the kit looks horrible (just my opinion) and if you’re looking for an aesthetic build then the wifi 6 kit will probably not be something you’ll want to install. You could probably hide most of the kit if your case is big enough but I’d be worried about the functionality if you don’t give the antenna enough space to do antenna things.For the price point it’s definitely a good motherboard to consider, it supports all of the recent GPU/CPUs and DDR5. In retrospect I probably would’ve shelled out more $ to get something with better audio capabilities and a better looking wifi 6 kit if those were things I’d even considered when deciding on my build (If you didn’t consider them yet, consider them now!)Not at all disappointed in my purchase, it’s doing its job and doing it well. But if you’re going to make a beefy build make sure the quality of all parts of it are just as high end.

I used this motherboard in the Coolermaster NR200 case with an RTX 3070 Gaming Z Trio, i5 13600k, and Noctua NH-U12A. Everything seems to be working well, though if you plan on using the U12A CPU cooler, be aware you will need to remove the top heatsink on top of the daughterboard that houses both m.2 SSDs for it to fit properly. That top heatsink doesn't have any other function (besides making it look nicer), so it's fine to remove it. If you're still concerned about temperatures of the top m.2 SSD, you could just get a lower profile 3rd party m.2 heatsink to put on, and it should fit. The top VRM heatsinks are pretty close to the heatpipes of the CPU cooler, but they don't touch, so you'll be fine there.I can't say much for the voltage regulation/power delivery performance as it seems like I lost the silicon lottery with my i5 13600k as I can't undervolt without crashing and also requires +0.1v to even have a stable 100mhz overclock, which then causes it to throttle because it's drawing ~200W. So I basically can't use any of the features I bought the motherboard for over a cheaper B760. Oh well. You will need to update the bios for you to use a 13th gen CPU, but it went relatively smoothly (except for user error because I downloaded the wrong bios and it kept popping up an error when verifying the bios I had on the USB drive. So make sure you get the right bios. I think I forgot to type in "plus" for the motherboard name while looking for the bios).

Tengo esta tarjeta madre con un I5 de 13va generación y en principio tuve problema para que arrancara la PC, lo que yo no sabia es que debes actualizar la BIOS ya que no soporta la 13va generación de Intel de fabrica, lo único que tienes que hacer es irte a la pagina del fabricante y buscar la actualización mas reciente de la BIOS, busca el manual de usuario y ahí vienen una serie de pasos para hacer el update con USB, descargas el archivo a la memoria y lo renombras según como indica el manual, lo insertas en el puerto USB de BIOS y presionas el botón que te indica el manual, el proceso dura como 15min (yo actualice con todos los componentes montados sin problema) después de eso ya soportara tu CPU sin problemas, espero esto les sirva.

La gente se queja pero yo no tuve ningún problema con ella hasta el momento funciona increíble y los materiales de primera, pesa bastante la tarjeta, de momento la tengo con un i3 de décima generación y no ah dado problemas veremos que pasa ahora que le instale el 11900k

El producto fue enviado el dia planeado, su calidad es muy buena, sin ningun problema al recibir el producto

Bios for this board is awful. Do yourself a favour, buy a better board

motherboard. i have one. get one