The GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Master Motherboard Review: Solid, But Not Special
by Gavin Bonshor on March 21, 2019 12:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Gigabyte
- ATX
- LGA1151
- i7-8700K
- Z390
- Aorus Master
Gaming Performance
AoTS Escalation
Ashes of the Singularity is a Real-Time Strategy game developed by Oxide Games and Stardock Entertainment. The original AoTS was released back in March of 2016 while the standalone expansion pack, Escalation, was released in November of 2016 adding more structures, maps, and units. We use this specific benchmark as it relies on both a good GPU as well as on the CPU in order to get the most frames per second. This balance is able to better display any systematic differences in gaming as opposed to a more GPU heavy title where the CPU and system don't matter quite as much. We use the default "Crazy" in-game settings using the DX11 rendering path in both 1080p and 4K UHD resolutions. The benchmark is run four times and the results averaged then plugged into the graph.
Rise of the Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story.
One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 3 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.
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spaceweasel - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link
Solid 5.0Ghz at 38C, at idle, on my Aorus Master, with F8 BIOS. One of the best motherboards I have ever used.3dfx_Rampage - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
And yet a bottom of the barrel Asus board performed better. More phases does not automatically make a VRM better.shaolin95 - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link
hahahahaha BS...Asus you can cook on it but that is how butthurt Asus fanboys are. CAnt accept that on z390, Asus dropped the ball big timeOpencg - Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - link
for all those phases it sure comes out alot slower than the asus boardsCyruskain - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
"During the overclock testing on the Z390 Aorus Master, we had to take a slightly different approach due to some instability as we went through the multipliers with default power settings."Yes, yes, and yes. I bought this board back in November on Black Friday due to a great sale New Egg had on it (which surprises me that this review is as late as it is. This board is about 5 months old now). But I simply couldn't figure out how to overclock the CPU manually via BIOS on this board due to crashing loops. I ultimately settled on using the Appcenter EZTune software which placed my 9700k @ 5.1 and ~1.3v, although it fluctuates depending on load (of course). I'm happy enough with a software generated 5.1. But OCing this board shouldn't have been as annoying as it was.
I'm actually surprised it was near bottom of the barrel for gaming fps though. Bummer. But I like the Mobo all things considered, especially the amount of USB ports it has.
Oh, and it does have a solid VRM as El Sama stated.
gavbon - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
I'm currently testing the GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Pro WIFI (on the test bench) and the overclocking is pretty similar in experience. As I highlighted in the review, this board (and the Pro WIFI) are the only boards where I've had to adjust LLC and power settings to achieve 5-5.1 GHz.Cyruskain - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
@gavbon I'm going to attempt to mirror the BIOS changes you did and see where that nets me. I also attempted to adjust the LLC alongside the freq. multiplier, but I continued to get crashing loops. However, there were things from the article you did that I didn't, so I'm curious to try it out. But, at the end of the day, the software netting me 5.1 isn't anything to scoff at. It's pretty impressive for software.gavbon - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
At least the software gave you a stable overclock, to begin with! 5.1 GHz is certainly good, pretty awesome if you ask me!sonny73n - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link
You can OC GPU with software but I would recommend against OCing CPU with software, especially Gigabyte software. Google it!ZedVile - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link
I have done a bit of testing on this Motherboard both on the test bench and fully integrated into a build. Ring ratio seems to play a role with performance and defaults have changed through-out the bios revisions. Huge variations in performance, CPU voltage requirements and ring ratio defaults.Bios F6 defaulted the Ring ratio to 4.8 while later revisions have lowered the ratio to 4.7 and 4.6.
I have experienced the best bench performance with the 9900k on F6 BIOS ring ratio 4.8 and at 5.0GHZ all core at 1.285 Volts. B-die at 4266 1.5v
Passes Intel Burn Test very high and maximum. 5.2GHZ @ 1.375 also passes IBT very high on F6 bios.
On the contrary bios F8e requires 1.325v @5.0GHZ and does not pass IBT @ maximum. Performance is also down if the ring ratio is not manually adjusted back up to 48.
Buildzoid has a great vid on samsung B-die overclocking on the Z390 Master
Over on the Gigabyte forum users have complained about XMP profiles and RAM compatibility throughout the bios revisions...
@Gavin Which bios revision were you using, and did you test DPC latency & gaming perf with different bios revisions?