The Intel Z590 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Detailed
by Gavin Bonshor on January 19, 2021 10:15 AM ESTGIGABYTE Z590 Aorus Xtreme & Xtreme WaterForce
GIGABYTE's flagship for Z590 is the Aorus Xtreme, with an Xtreme WaterForce model for users with custom water cooling. GIGABYTE has gone for a darker look for Z590 when compared to the Z490 Aorus Xtreme, with an all-black aesthetic that looks clean and stylish. The Z590 Aorus Xtreme WaterForce uses a large custom monoblock, which provides cooling to the CPU and the board's large 20+1 phase power delivery. The general design includes RGB LED lighting, which is installed into the rear panel cover and chipset heatsink.
At the top right-hand corner is a two-digit LED debugger, with a power and reset button embedded within a panel covering a right-angled 24-pin 12 V ATX power input. Covering the rest of the PCB is a plethora of black PCIe armor, which blends the M.2 heatsinks into the design. Coated with armor reinforcement, the Z590 Aorus Xtreme includes three full-length slots with two PCIe 4.0 that can operate at x16 or x8/x8, with a third slot electronically locked down to PCIe 3.0 x4. GIGABYTE includes four memory slots capable of supporting up to DDR4-5000, with a total capacity of up to 128 GB across four memory slots. For storage, GIGABYTE includes three M.2 slots, with one operating at PCIe 4.0 x4, two at PCIe 3.0 x4, with six SATA ports offering support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays.
On the rear panel of both the Z590 Aorus Xtreme and Xtreme WaterForce is dual Thunderbolt 4 Type-C, with eight USB 3.2 G2 Type-A ports and one HDMI video output. A Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec and ESS Sabre ES9018K2M DAC power the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output, while at the left-hand side, GIGABYTE has included a Clear CMOS and Q-Flash Plus button. Finishing off the rear panel is a pair of Ethernet ports, one through an Aquantia 10 GbE controller and the other by an Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controller, with antenna ports for Intel's AX210 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi.
At the time of writing, GIGABYTE hasn't shared any details on its Z590 models' pricing.
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James5mith - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
Awesome, Multi-GbE this generation! Remind me again which company sells Multi-GbE switches for less than $20/port?Tilmitt - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
We live in joyful hope.dtexo - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/compar...AX210 doesn’t seem to be CNVi, but PCIe+USB
dtexo - Wednesday, January 20, 2021 - link
Same with Killer Wi-Fi card(s)https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/produc...
Oxford Guy - Thursday, January 21, 2021 - link
So Intel can marry its "Killer" ethernet port to its skull-bearing SSDs for maximum performance in Edge.Harry Lloyd - Thursday, January 21, 2021 - link
The price of the PRIME Z590-A cannot be right. That has always been the fully-featured variant of an entry-level Z-chipset model. The Z490-A costs just over 200 $ now. Is this because of the VRM setup? Who needs 16 phases on a board like this? You will not buy this for extreme overclocking anyway.All these ASUS prices seem ridiculous.
Targon - Thursday, January 21, 2021 - link
And I thought the X570 chipset boards were a bit crazy when it comes to prices, these are off the rails on the crazy train! I am all for having a POST code display, but OLED screens to see on the motherboard what this or that is also seems like a waste of money. If you can get the machine to POST in the first place, going to the BIOS to get data about what is going on with this or that is enough. A waterblock for those who plan to use liquid cooling will also add to the price, no question, and it isn't a bad idea, but some of these other things that just add to the price without adding functionality is what I have a problem with.PaulHoule - Friday, January 22, 2021 - link
Ugh.I've never found motherboard reviews that helpful and the last article I read on this site makes me feel worse about it because now I know the performance of a system I build might depend more on the turbo behavior of the motherboard than on the CPU.
I've often found that getting a motherboard is a crap shoot and frequently you find that a particular motherboard has limitations on what you can do with the PCI lanes, or a component that had 35 db of noise for the reviewer has 50 db of noise for me and so forth. I see that $1800 motherboard and I ask myself, "do they make enough of these that they really know that the analog audio path is clean?" and such.
Last time I built a system I had to replace about half of the components at least once to get something I was happy with.
These days I'm inclined to go to a system builder just to have somebody to RMA it to, but if reviews were useful I might go back to building a system myself.
Ghostline91 - Tuesday, January 26, 2021 - link
How's the Biostar Z590 board? It looks like they're going back to more high-end specs and this one might be a good one to try out. When will we see reviews?vinicici22 - Wednesday, January 27, 2021 - link
do you guys know if the z590-a rog strix out yet? or it's just already sold out on every sites?