Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Xtreme Review

Test Setup

With an entirely new platform we’ve taken the opportunity to update our test system to include Windows 11. We’ve also got some DDR5 from Corsair in the form of the Dominator Platinum. Plenty of scope to make the new 12th Generation Intel CPUs perform to their best.

Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Xtreme
Intel Core i9-12900K
32GB Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR5
Windows 11 64bit
Sabrent 4TB Rocket Plus
Nvidia RTX 2080Ti
Corsair AX1600i
Corsair H150i with Noctua 3000 RPM fans

Clock Speeds

The Gigabyte is overvolted out of the box, and indeed even if you plan to run ‘at stock’ then it behooves you to go in to the BIOS and turn things down a notch. Just by backing down the VCore you can unlock more performance without actually touching the clock speed or multiplier or any such thing.

Should you choose to overclock then the Xtreme doesn’t play nicely with the Intel control software so it’s very much a sleeves up, into the UEFI way of overclocking but the results are all you would expect from such a premium product.

  

Block Diagram