Fresh off the heels of the latest AMD AM5 X870 boards, Gigabyte’s new Intel board have arrived. The Z890 Aorus Master has been on my test bench for a few weeks now and it is quite impressive.
Watch the Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Master review
I have always enjoyed Gigabyte’s products thanks to their feature-packed offerings without breaking the bank. Often, you can pick up Aorus motherboards for $200 – $300 less than its competitors. And they get the job done.
Of course, this new Z890 Aorus Master is built for Intel’s new Core Ultra 200 series chips. This means it comes packed with the new LGA 1851 socket. The new socket means you can’t use any previous Intel chips on this board. That’s because there are 151 new pins on this board which utilize most of the new Intel chips. There are also new plastic nubs in different places which prevent you from inserting the wrong chip in the wrong board.
As it is a new Intel board, it comes with the new CUDIMM RAM support and can be kitted out with up to 256GB of RAM with speeds of up to 9500 Mega Transfers. For this review, I will be using 48GB of Kingston Renegade DDR5 CUDIMM RAM across 2 24GB sticks. I also have the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K CPU.
Intel’s new Core Ultra 200 Series also include PCIE advancements. The ability to use a Gen5 SSD and a GPU at the same time is now possible on the board thanks to the 20 PCIE 5 lanes. Intel says that the extra 151 pins on the socket aren’t all active either yet. So we will likely see future chips support this socket and use those pins.
There’s also AI for those who care about it. The new Intel Core Ultra 200 chips come with included NPUs for AI tasks. We have already seen this tech in Intel notebooks and now it has arrived for desktop PCs.
Intel says the new socket has improved dampening to prevent the bending of the chips over time. The company put a pad on the hinge. You can see this by the white part under the socket. The company says this will lift a bit of stress and pressure from the chip when clamped down and over time, reduce the load. It is too early to tell if this will work but let’s hope for the best.
The socket has also changed the holes around the chip. All LGA 1700 coolers should fit just fine here but if you use a contact frame, it won’t be able to install. That’s because of not only the shifted holes but also a new nub at the bottom of the socket that gets in the way.
When you pick up the Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Master, you’ll get the board in the box and some paperwork. Gigabyte also included some additional connectors. There are two temperature sensor cables, a SATA cable, a Wi-Fi 7 antenna with an easy clip-on plug and the G-Connector.
Given this is the Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Master, it is the top-of-the-range board you can get your hands on from Gigabyte. It comes with an 18 + 1 + 2 twin digital VRM design and all the heatsinks you can ask for to keep the board and CPU area cool.
The board is powered by a 24-pin ATX connector and two 8-pin CPU connectors. This board doesn’t have the extra 8-pin connector we have seen on other brand motherboards. This is likely due to the VRM design.
It comes with 2 PCIE 5.0 M.2 Slots and 3 PICE 4.0 M.2 Slots. There’s one PCIE 5 x16 slot, one PCIE 4 x 4 slot and one PCIE 4 x 1 slot.
Headers here also include two USB Type-C 3.2, one CPU Fan Header, one CPU Water Cooling Pump Header, four System Fan headers, four Water Cooling Pump headers, four ARGB Gen2 LED headers, and one RBG LED Strip header. Of course, you’ll also get the standard front-case headers, two temperature sensors, and the internal HDMI port on the inside of the board. This port is designed for internal sensor panels. Storage-wise, there are four SATA 6Gb/s connectors and five M.2 sockets.
The back IO then comes with the Q-flash Plus button, Clear CMOS button, 2 Intel Thunderbolt 4 connectors, 6 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A Ports, 4 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, an RJ-45 port, the Wi-Fi 7 antenna connector, 2 gold-plated audio jacks and 1 optimal S/PDIF Out.
The Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Master is a stylish board. It is the Master brand and boasts some clean aesthetics. The heatsinks have a sleek silver tone to them. The bottom M.2 heatsink is mirror-coated and even has a metal Aorus slab on the corner. The main M.2 slot has a massive heatsink on it too. It is chiselled off the side and looks like chipped metal.
Both of these cool-looking heatsinks are tool-less and can be removed by simply unclipping one end and pulling the slab out. They clip back easily too. Of course, there is also the PCIE latch which is a staple now. RGB on this board includes lights on the IO shield and lights under the M.2 heatsink. You can actually see these on the board when the heatsink is removed.
The RAM slots also have a new look to them. Two of the slots are coated in metal making it easier to distinguish the channels.
Speaking of which, Gigabyte did a great job making every header and component on this board clear thanks to bold labels and clear text. I usually know where all these ports are and what they do, but the labelling is the best I have seen on a board to date. Some headers even include the speed of the port.
I wasted no time setting the board up on my test bench. I plugged in all the fans, attached the cooler, installed the RAM, put my SSD in and booted it up. There was an updated BIOS available for this review. I recommend you always set up a board with your BIOS files readily available on a USB drive. It helps with performance and errors you might encounter across a wide range of reasons.
I then installed Windows 11, updated the platform, installed Gigabyte control centre, updated that too and made sure everything I was using was as up-to-date as possible.
Of course, I wanted to test out the Intel Core Ultra 9 285K on this board. This is the chip Gigabyte sent with the board for testing. I also wanted to test out the kit with and without overclocking tweaks. So before I enabled any extra BIOS performance tweaks, I ran benchmarks as is.
Power use during these untweaked benchmarks reached 225W during the CPU-Z stress test. Max temperature peaked at 84C on the CPU sensor with a 57C reading on the VRM MOSFIT. The board remained fairly cool at 42C.
Efficiency cores maxed out at 5.7GHz but dropped down to 4.8GHz and idled around that mark when temperatures peaked at over 75C. 4.8GHz seems to be the safe spot for thermals and out-of-the-box performance.
Gigabyte then has a new overclocking platform called Aorus AI Snatch. It is a one-click accelerator that enhances your CPU and DRR 5 performance. The brand says you could get 7% higher speeds than with the setting off and up to 20% more AI performance. Essentially, this setting turns your BIOS tweaks from EZ to Peak. The tool also has a safe overclocking protection system that protects against overheating, over-voltage and short circuits. I enabled it all and re-ran my tests as well as benchmarked the Kingston Renegade DDR5 RAM.
The AI overclocking helped improve score slightly but once I tweaked the CPU with Intel Extreme Tuning, I saw an even bigger difference. I upped the Performance Core Ratio by three notches to 57 and Efficiency by two to 47. This boosted the average Efficiency Core speed to 4.99GHz from 4.8GHz. The CPU did hit 92C and power use increased to 270W. This was a subtle overclock, to be honest, and does show what potential is here for pushing this CPU even further. With this overclock, the board still remained at 54C on the VRM MOSFET which was also quite impressive.
Testing out the RAM was also interesting. This new 8800MTs RAM definitely lives up to its speed. Once I enabled the EXPO mode in the BIOS, I was able to reach a full 4400MHz on these RAM sticks which is the full 8800MT/s. Of course, this new RAM offers a lot of room for overclocking and performance tweaks too. There also also larger, faster sticks in the works which will be available next year.
The Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Master is a great board that performed exceptionally well. Throughout the tests, it held up across heat and speeds. The easy overclocking features also provide quick ways to toggle more performance on the CPU and RAM. The big draw, however, is the performance of the CPU.
This Intel Core Ultra 9 does come with improved thermals. Out of the box, the chip sat comfortably at 85C. Compared to the 14th-gen chips that peaked at 100C most of the time, this is impressive. Even more so if you take into consideration the performance here. Sure, 220W is a lot of power so you’re not getting magical performance here powered by unicorn farts. The chip gets hot and eats through power. However, compared to previous chips, Intel has actually improved thermals and performance. Even overclocking resulted in the mid-90C with a substantial boost in scores. Again, this used 270W so there’s an obvious trade-off.
RAM-wise, these fast sticks are also great to see. CUDIMM RAM provided improved speeds across the board, easy overclock methods and of course, larger sticks. I think we’ll reach a ridiculous mark in RAM speeds over the next year with sticks that provide speeds no one really needs right now. But the tech is here and great to see.
Of course, all this does come at higher costs, higher temperatures and higher power use compared to AMD. So you need to keep that in mind. Weigh up what performance you’re looking at and whether the trade-offs are worth it.
This review was based on a kit sent to us by Gigabyte. Visit the official Gigabyte site here to find out more about the Z890 Aorus Master.
Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Master
Summary
The Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Master is a well-rounded board that doesn’t promise what it can’t deliver. It handles the new Intel Core Ultra 9 285K fairly well with fantastic cooling and overclocking enhancements. It is easy to set up, easy to tweak and looks stylish too. Considering the board’s price, this offers great value for money. The lack of HDMI on the IO is an issue but the plethora of ports and PCIE offerings make this a future-proof product. We just hope Intel doesn’t change its socket again anytime soon.
