Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Master Preview
Up Close
Starting as always at the top left we find an 8+8 power input arrangement, in reinforced pin blocks too. If you’ve been reading all of these previews then a) thank you crazy people and b) you’ll know that 8+8 has so far been indicative of the expected price point.
At the top corner we find the CPU fan pairing sitting alongside the two different types of LED strip headers. The onboard power switch is always useful.
The middle of the board is always where we find the front panel USB connectors and the Aorus Master is no exception. There is also another system fan/pump header here, if your cooling requirements haven’t been filled up to now.
Continuing our tour we find the six SATA 6Gbps ports that help you keep your huge collection of images on each new system you get. Next up the front panel connectors. Without any cables in we can see why Gigabyte have moved to a monochrome setup, but given how much of it is covered we do, kinda, miss the user-friendliness of the colour coded setup. Maybe our old eyes just need all the help they can get without resorting to taking a photo of the front panel on our phone and blowing it up. Just us? Next up a combination fan and pump header sits with a pair of system fan headers, before we get to a noise monitoring header and then the USB ports we’ll look at below.
From right to left, because why not, two USB 2.0 front panel connectors for all your RGB needs, RGB and addressable RGB if they weren’t sated by an external lighting system, and the BIOS switches that are such a feature of the Gigabyte boards since time immemorial.
The power stage is, and forgive us for quoting Gigabyte directly, 14 Phase Digital VRM Solution with 90A Smart Power Stage + Tantalum Polymer Capacitors Array. That’s a stunning amount of power for what we expect to be a CPU in the middle of the Intel range. Gigabyte score plenty of style points for the way they’ve integrated the regulation finned heatsink into a block style design. Very pretty.
Lastly around the back we find a full selection of connectivity options. From top to bottom they are the BIOS flash and CMOS clear controls, 2T2R antennas, USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, four USB 3.2 Gen1 and three USB 3.2 Gen2 in Type-A and 1 USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C. Lastly we have the 2.5G Intel LAN and the jacks for the eponymous Realtek ALC1220-VB audio.
