The Intel Z490 Overview: 44+ Motherboards Examined
by Gavin Bonshor on April 30, 2020 10:00 AM ESTGIGABYTE Z490 Aorus Ultra
Representing GIGABYTE's mid-range Aorus series is the Z490 Aorus Ultra with virtually identical aesthetics when compared with the Z490 Aorus Master. It's also a step up in spec too for enthusiasts with its direct 12-phase power delivery, with use nanocarbon fins for the and direct touch heat pipes on the heatsinks with GIGABYTE claiming it improves heat dissipation. Included in the specifications is an Intel 2.5 G Ethernet controller, Inte's AX201 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface, three PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, and three full-length PCIe 3.0 lanes with support for up to two-way NVIDIA SLI and three-way AMD Crossfire.
The GIGABYTE Z490 Aorus Ultra has a black and grey theme with PCIe slot armor, with integrated RGB LEDs in the rear panel cover and a large Aorus logo on the chipset heatsink. It has three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which operate at x16, x8/x8, and x8/x8/+4, with three PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, and six SATA ports. Cooling the 12-phase power delivery driven by an ISL69269 PWM controller is a nanocarbon fin array heatsink, with an 8-pin and 4-pin pair of 12 V ATX CPU power inputs. Memory support is improved over Z390 with four slots capable of running up to 128 GB of DDR4-4800.
On the rear panel is one USB 3.2 G2 20 Gbps Type-C, three USB 3.2 G2 10 Gbps Type-A, two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and four USB 2.0 ports. A single HDMI video output allows users to use Intel's integrated graphics, while the three 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output are powered by a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec. For networking, GIGABYTE is using Intel's I225 2.5 G Ethernet controller, with an Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface which also adds support for BT 5.1 devices.
The GIGABYTE Z490 Aorus Ultra has an MSRP of $299 and is comparable with the Z490 Aorus Master in many ways, including controller set and aesthetics. The main differences come in the power delivery, with the Z490 Aorus Ultra opting for a true 12-phase setup, with the Master opting for a 6+1 design with doublers. Both are solid offerings in the upper end of the mid-range, but the Z490 Aorus Ultra is a solid offering on paper, with GIGABYTE implementing plenty of premium features at a good price point.
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stevenfindley - Monday, June 8, 2020 - link
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Shinkiro - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link
A lot of people don't upgrade every consecutive generation. My 3570k and 980ti have been serving me well for half a decade, but now that it's time to get new gear I'm happy to see higher maximum speeds and lower temperatures than the previous generation. The fact that gen10 requires a different socket than Gen 9 is completely irrelevant to me, aside from choosing a compatible board.Orange_Swan - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link
Exactly, my i5-4690k has served me well for just under 6 years (brought Nov. 14), I tend to buy a new CPU and Mobo every 5ish years.althaz - Saturday, May 2, 2020 - link
The point is though, that you need to buy a new motherboard, which means you'll probably consider AMD's Ryzen 3000 line-up (generally, AMD will give you better productivity performance, upgradability and lower power, but worse gaming performance, which is why I went Intel last year). If Intel weren't such dicks in forcing people to buy new motherboards, maybe you would be able to just drop in a new CPU (actually in your case it really is irrelevant, a new motherboard was *actually* needed for 6th gen, everything since then would work on the same boards if Intel weren't dicks, but the point stands in general).Tabalan - Sunday, May 3, 2020 - link
Intel i5 3570k was released 8 years ago, while i5 4690k is 6 years old. Wanting to upgrade build after 6 years with 3 years of mobo backward compatibility (like with AMD, Ryzen 1000 to 4000) means that you either buy 3 years old CPU or buy new mobo + new CPU. In latter case, it doesn't matter if you go with Intel or AMD, because it's down to same thing.bronan - Saturday, May 16, 2020 - link
Indeed my point exactly every year new stuff gets launched and loads of people jump onto the newest toys just because the cpu is maybe 0.1 Ghz faster if your lucky.Because that boost does not work constant at all, i saw that with several friends who bought the 8700k which claims to boost to 4.7 Ghz. Reality is that only 3 out of 28 of these cpu did boost up to 4.7 the rest only gets between 4.4 and 4.6 at the highest and to be honest only in certain tasks.
So if you follow the baseline of the cpu usage you see during some tasks a few spikes but most of the time it hangs around the baseclock speed.
I actually still was using my 6700k till 2 months ago on a z170 motherboard then i saw somebody selling his 8700k for a nice price and i switch over.
The performance increase is close to 0 in almost every task besides when i am packing and unpacking rar and zip files. In the games i do i see hardly any performance gains as well.
The only thing i am planning to update now is my graphics card, so i am kinda waiting for a very cheap AMD VII or if AMD releases the new big navy.
But the people who own the AMD VII tend to want to keep them because there had not been one for sale in many months for a reasonable price. The only one i saw was sold at a price above the release price when they came to market.....
So those who bought the cards seem to be content enough to not sell them at all.
So i am still stuck at my gtx 1070 and have no plans to pay a premium price for a next gen GPU.
@Orange_Swan i tend to buy only when i see a huge improvement for the tasks i do, if its below 3% increase i will not buy anything at all. So i sometimes keep running the same stuff sometimes even up to 12 years.
I got a huge amount of people who i help with their pc hardware and problems and almost everyone of them relies on my expertise to give them proper advise when they want some kinda upgrade.
Often i can asure them that even though the bragging bonus can be fun, they often will see no improvement at all if they buy a new system. So they wait till i tell them their system can be upgraded or replaced. In almost any case its the gpu which gets replaced by a second hand one in very rare situations i have to ask them to order a new one.
What i am saying is that even though they keep releasing new stuff, most people do not have a need to upgrade/update anything.
Actually for now there is absolute no need to have something faster at all for any game at all in the near future, because all will run fine with your current stuff.
I actually have several who have at least a titan from recent generation and still can not run their games at highest settings in 4K.
RealBeast - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link
All of my builds since my Athlon have been Intel, but no way they'll suck me in on this Z490 1200 pin build, when their next decent CPUs will require something like a Z491 with 1201 pins. ;)Andrew LB - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
Intel has already said the next gen will still use LGA 1200 socket.WaltC - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link
Can't see much "exciting" about this...;)Oxford Guy - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
It seems like a poster child for a Powerpoint on the inefficiencies of capitalism.Literally making another iteration of products "just because".