The Intel Z590 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Detailed
by Gavin Bonshor on January 19, 2021 10:15 AM ESTGIGABYTE Z590 Aorus Ultra
The GIGABYTE Z590 Aorus Ultra is an ATX sized motherboard and caters towards the mid-range of the Z590 stack. GIGABYTE is advertising a 17-phase power delivery, organized into an 8+1 configuration with the CPU section doubling up on its 90 A power stages. Design-wise, the Z590 Aorus Ultra has a black PCB, with black and silver M.2 and chipset heatsinks, with an Aorus styled design built into the rear panel cover.
Towards the board's central and bottom area are three full-length PCIe slots, with the top two operating at PCIe 4.0 x16 and x8/x8, while the third full-length slot is locked at PCIe 3.0 x4. Storage options include one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2, two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2, and six SATA ports, with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10. GIGABYTE is currently listing Intel spec memory support with DDR4-3200, but this is likely to be higher once GIGABYTE has published its QVL memory list. However, the four memory slots do include support for up to 128 GB. In the top-right hand corner of the board is a two-digit LED debugger.
The rear panel is one USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C, four USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and four USB 2.0 ports. For users looking to leverage Intel's HD integrated graphics, there's a single DisplayPort. There are five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output powered by Realtek's latest ALC4080 HD audio codec. The board's networking capabilities include an Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controller, with an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 CNVi, including support for BT 5.0 devices.
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lmcd - Tuesday, January 19, 2021 - link
8 cores is plenty for this generation of memory bandwidth. The problem is that Intel's next gen will have "16" processors where 8 are full cores, while AMD will have a full 16 cores with all that bandwidth. This generation, Intel is competitive but late.rahvin - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
Is this an attempt to be funny?pman6 - Tuesday, January 19, 2021 - link
meh. show me the $80 b560 boards.this is overkill for me.
Geef - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
Why is Intel always behind the game with memory speeds? 3200 is just a basic speed nowadays. Its great if your running CAS 14 chips but not many are. Why haven't they set a speed up to 4000 or 5000? They can keep XMP going just fine but wouldn't it be better to have systems automatically go that fast if they can?Deicidium369 - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
JEDEC tops out at 3200 - the fastest OFFICIAL speed it 3200. I have Gskill DDR4 4133 on my Gigabyte Z390 / i9900Kand JEDEC speeds are the same for AMD and Intel
Duncan Macdonald - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
For most games the 5800x is the sweet spot due to only having one CPU chiplet so no communication between chiplets. The 5900 and 5950 with two chiplets lose on many games due to the cost of inter chiplet communications exceeding the benefits from the extra cores.The 5900 and 5950 are best in programs that can make good use of all the cores (eg some video editing programs). For any game player with a 5900 or 5950, it might well be possible to get higher game performance by limiting Windows to only the first chiplet (using the numproc boot parameter).
Makaveli - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
I agree with you however the 5800X is really overpriced right now. So when you only have to pay abit more for the 5900X its looks like a far better deal. I think once Rocket lake is out we should see a price correction on the 5800X so the time to buy those will be in March.yeeeeman - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
This....this is wasted resources IMO. There was no need to make another platform on 14nm when they have the 10th gen which is just fine. I mean, the 10900k/10700k are great CPUs still, even compared to 5000 Ryzen series, so I don't know...they should've focused the efforts on bringing Alder Lake and its successor platforms forward.Hope Pat will make a bit of order here and make the schedules and ambitions of Intel a bit more daring, cause Bob just...milked it like there is no tomorrow. Refreshes after refreshes and refreshes.
Makaveli - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
That's what happens when you have a finance guy running the company he is just going to keep the wheels turning and not be aggressive. The new guy is an engineer and I believe he will push the pace which is what Intel needs now.Oxford Guy - Thursday, January 21, 2021 - link
Well, the world really needed a stack of 15 boards from just one motherboard company, too.