The Intel Z690 Motherboard Overview (DDR5): Over 50+ New Models
by Gavin Bonshor on November 9, 2021 9:00 AM ESTGIGABYTE Z690 Aero D (DDR5)
Moving away from the gaming-focused Aorus branded motherboards, and GIGABYTE has announced its content-creator-friendly Aero series will be making a return for Z690. The GIGABYTE Z690 Aero D is a solid representation of this with plenty of premium controllers, high-end features, and good compatibility with external devices. Focusing on the design, the Z690 Aero D is decked out in a contrasting black and silver aesthetic, with a classy large rear panel cover, with silver heatsinks throughout which covers the majority of the PCB. GIGABYTE has also omitted any integrated RGB LED lighting, which is typical of it for its Aero series of motherboards.
Dominating the lower half of the board on the GIGABYTE Z690 Aero D is a pair of full-length PCIe 5.0 slots that can operate at x16 and x8/x8, with a third full-length slot electronically locked down to PCIe 3.0 x4. For M.2 storage, there are four PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, while only one of these supports SATA-based drives. The Z690 Aero D also includes six SATA ports with support for Intel RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. Located in the top right-hand corner is the board's memory slots, with GIGABYTE including four with support for DDR5-6400, and a combined capacity of up to 128 GB.
Looking at the rear panel of the GIGABYTE Z690 Aero D, and this is where all of that content-creator-friendly goodness is. It includes dual Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports, with six USB 3.2 G2 Type-A ports, and a pair of video ports including one HDMI 2.1 video output and one DisplayPort 1.4 video input. The board's networking configuration is high-end, with an Aquantia AQC107 10 GbE and Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controller pairing, with an Intel AX210 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi providing both wireless and BT 5.2 connectivity. Integrated audio options are basic, with just two 3.5 mm audio jacks that finish off a premium, yet interesting rear panel layout.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
126 Comments
View All Comments
DigitalFreak - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
Except DirectStorage actually exists in the XBox Series X. Once the XBSX native games start getting ported things will start to move.Bp_968 - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - link
Why fill my pc with loud and hot hard drives? I have 2 M.2 sticks as local storage and a NAS for all the rust drives in another room. I wouldn't want to go back to the days of using my PC for that.And if you must have tons of sata just buy a SAS card. Their cheap and flexible. Each SAS port on the card fans out to 4 sata ports using a cheap cable.
The Von Matrices - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
Since the 100 series chipsets, the lanes for the SATA ports are shared with other things, so you aren't getting dedicated ports like you used to. You have to disable other features if you want to use all the SATA ports. With my current Z390 board, I can't use more than 2 SATA ports without compromising on other features, and I can't use all 6 SATA ports unless I disable both M.2 slots. Since they're sharing lanes, there's little cost and little reason to not have them, and that will probably continue into the future.DigitalFreak - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
Things have changed the last couple of generations. My Z690 board has 6 SATA ports and 4 PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots. The only thing shared is SATA between one SATA port and one of the M.2 slots. As long as you don't need a M.2 SATA drive, you can run 4 NVMe drives and 6 SATA devices simultaneously..KarlKastor - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - link
There has nothing changed. The IO-Lanes of the chipset can eather be SATA or PCIe. The reason why you have nothing shared is, because they saved money for switches. You have not the option how to use this Lanes.This happens since Rocket Lake. The CPU has additional PCIe lanes, so you don't need to share much anymore and the Board is full already. There is no space for more M.2. Backside maybe.
12345 - Monday, November 15, 2021 - link
Z690 has a x8 gen 4 link to the chipset now. You don't have to disable SATA anymore to use all m.2 slots.meacupla - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
I am pretty sure intel had 8 SATA ports since Z77, but board manufacturers routed 2 SATA ports for m.2 SATA. The On Z87 and Z97, 8 SATA ports with 2 ports shared for m.2 SATA was totally a thing.KarlKastor - Wednesday, November 10, 2021 - link
The silicon has 8 ports for long time. But maximum usable for the Zxy7 was 6. Eight were workstation only.If you used shared SATA on M.2, then you had less than six SATA Ports usable.
TheinsanegamerN - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
SATA SSD sales continue to remain strong, and are much mroe economical for large file storage per TB then M.2 drives (a 2TB SATA drive is around $170 now), and if you have a RAID aray with 3+ drives speeds begin to encroah on NVMe speeds, a RAID 5 array with 4 SATA III will hit 1.6GB/s read speeds.Mr Perfect - Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - link
Man, these Z-chipset boards keep going up in price. I'm curious what eventual H670 chipset boards will look like. If they've got everything you need without all the flashy bits, I'll probably shoot for one of those.