Intel Z390 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Analyzed
by Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on October 8, 2018 10:53 AM EST- Posted in
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- Z390
GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Pro
The GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Pro slots right in between the Z390 Aorus Ultra and Z390 Aorus Elite in terms of their SKU list. The Z390 Aorus Pro is available with and without Wi-Fi, with the Wi-Fi model including support for 2T2R Wave 2 802.11 wireless network connectivity with speeds of up to 1.73 Gbps. This is the only difference in terms of specifications between the two models. 
Both the Z390 Aorus Pro and Z390 Aorus Pro WIFI has four RAM slots which support DDR4-4133 and a combined capacity of up to 64 GB.
On the board is a total of three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots with the first and second slot getting a treatment of metal slot protection, while the third slot remains bare; each full-length slot from top to bottom operates at x16, x8 and x4 meaning two-way SLI and up to three-way CrossFire multi-graphics card configurations are supported. In addition to the full-length slots, there are three PCIe 3.0 x1 slots present. Storage wise there are two M.2 slots which both have support for PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA drives and both slots have M.2 heatsinks included; there are also a total of six SATA ports which allow for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays to be utilized.
The bulk of rear panel connections are made of USB ports with a total of nine consisting of two USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A, one USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C, three USB 3.0 Type-A and four USB 2.0 ports. A further two USB 3.0 and four additional ports can be made available through the board's internal headers. The Wi-Fi model benefits from a 2T2R Wave 2 802.11ac dual antennae Wi-Fi module, while both versions have an Intel I219V Gigabit networking controller powering the single LAN port. The Z390 Aorus Pro and Aorus Pro WIFI use a Realtek ALC1220-VB audio codec which powers the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output, as well as a single HDMI video output also being present across both models.
As it stands the GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Pro WIFI is set to retail for $200 and users not intending to use a wireless network can instead opt for the non-WiFi version for a slightly altered price of $190. It's up to the user to determine whether or not they need wireless capabilities as the difference between the two models sits at $10. The primary target market is gamers and as both Aorus Pro models sit between the more basic Z390 Aorus Elite and the relatively high-end Z390 Aorus Ultra, GIGABYTE is trying to occupy as much market segmentation as it possibly can.
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Valantar - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
That would be pretty shocking, yeah, but the sheer size of that lump of metal still has me a bit worried. Guess that's what you get when you try to squeeze power delivery for a CPU that (likely) pulls >300W when overclocked into an ITX board (and refuse to use riser boards like before, for some reason).FXi - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
The power feed also changed with z390 I believe at least in the Asus models it did. The power feed of the 370 was "enough" to drive the newer 9700/9900 but there is a difference there that may impact enthusiasts. I don't think it enough to warrant an upgrade but something to consider.Also people should remember that while it is still a bit of a ways off, wifi is going to change to Wifi6 or 802.11ax starting now and probably seeing much of the changeover during 2019/2020 depending on adoption choices. And there is also pci-e 4.0 to consider next year probably that should be thought about before people do "marginal" upgrades from 370 era chipsets.
FXi - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Silly thing posted in edit window. Sorry power delivery and other points covered by you. Would have edited if I could have found that optionDanNeely - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Other things to look forward to in the next few generations are: Less-hacky USB3.1 implementations (eg this articles speculation that a 10g port will need to eat 2 HSIO lanes instead of 1, and still needing an extra chip to support USB-C). Spectre/Meltdown fixes in hardware. A reduced DMI bottleneck between the CPU and chipset (either just from upgrading the link to PCIe4/5, moving some of the peripheral IO onto the CPU, or both.Valantar - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
Considering that the maximum theoretical bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 x1 is 984.6MB/s, you _need_ two PCIe lanes (and thus two HSIO lanes) for a USB 3.1G2 (1.25GB/s) controller unless you want to significantly bottleneck it. That's not "hacky", that's reality, even if this leaves a lot of bandwidth "on the table" if this only powers a single port (which it rarely does, though, and given that a full load on two ports at one time is unlikely, running two 1.25GB/s ports off two .99GB/s lanes is a good solution).Moving DMI to PCIe 4.0 will be good, though, particularly for multiple NVMe SSDs and >GbE networking.
DanNeely - Wednesday, October 10, 2018 - link
Splitting the traffic over 2 HSIO lanes is a hack because it'd require something to split/combine the traffic between the chipset and usbport. That in turn has me wondering if the speculation about the implementation being done that way is correct, or if the Z390 has 6 HSIO lanes that can run 10Gbps instead of the 8 that the rest top out at for PCIe3repoman27 - Thursday, October 18, 2018 - link
The implementation is absolutely not done that way. HSIO lanes are simply differential signaling pairs connected to a PCIe switch or various controllers via a mux. The PCH has a 6-port USB 3.1 Gen 2 xHCI, which can only feed 6 HSIO muxes. The back end of that xHCI is connected to an on-die PCIe switch which in turn is connected to the DMI interface. That DMI 3.0 x4 interface is already massively oversubscribed, but it is at least equivalent to a PCIe 3.0 x4 link, which is the most bandwidth that can be allotted to a single PCH connected device.Srikzquest - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
HDMI 2.0 is available in Asus and Gigabyte's ITX boards as well.gavbon - Tuesday, October 9, 2018 - link
Thank you Srikzquest; updated the tables, obviously missed this yesterday :) - Thanks againHickorySwitch - Monday, October 8, 2018 - link
Correction:https://www.asus.com/us/Commercial-Servers-Worksta...
It says under "Specifications" that the board sports HDMI 2.0[b?]