The Intel Z590 Motherboard Overview: 50+ Motherboards Detailed
by Gavin Bonshor on January 19, 2021 10:15 AM ESTGIGABYTE Z590 Aorus Master
The next model down from the Aorus Xtreme is the GIGABYTE Z590 Aorus Master. It is an ATX board with a premium feature set including Aquantia 10 GbE, Wi-Fi 6E, and three PCIe M.2 slots. The design is similar to the previous Z490 version, with black and gray heatsinks covering most of the board's PCB. It features integrated RGB into the etchings on the rear panel cover that resembles claw marks, with an RGB enabled Aorus Falcon logo on the chipset heatsink.
Towards the board's center are three full-length PCIe slots, with two operating at PCIe 4.0 x16 and x8/x8, with the last one locked to PCIe 3.0 x4. GIGABYTE includes plenty of storage options, including three M.2 slots, one supporting PCIe 4.0 x4, with the other two limited to PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA drives. Six SATA ports allow for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. GIGABYTE is currently supporting DDR4-5000, while users can install up to 128 GB across four available memory slots.
On the rear panel, GIGABYTE includes one USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C, five USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports. A single Ethernet port is powered by an Aquantia 10 GbE controller with an Intel AX210 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi. Simultaneously, the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output are driven by a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec and ESS Sabre ES9118 DAC. There is a pair of buttons, one for Q-Flash Plus and another for clearing the CMOS, while a single DisplayPort 1.2 video output offers users access to Intel's HD integrated graphics.
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?