These Z590 boards are very stable depending you your settings but out of the box, they are solid. Lots of features but not enough USB-C 20 mbps ports/headers. For that matter, there are lots of cases that are way behind in their USB-C designs too. I can however conclude the cost of this chipset is far over priced for the value received. These Z chipsets used to sell for $140 or so but to think another $200 to $300 makes the new boards worth their salt is a full bubble off plumb.
I agree. Intel should really integrate Thunderbolt in all their CPUs. Even Alder Lake-S will require a discrete Thunderbolt controller sadly. Dual 10GbE NICs should be standard in premium boards.
well just because they eliminated a warranty option may just mean no one was buying it, for intel to truly be competitive you have to oc, anyone in the tech space and especially intel. I think sorta understands that rn with the current setting of ryzen.
Overall, I am happy with this product. DDR-4400, overclocked 11900k at 5.1ghz all cores, gen4 NVMe SSD, 3080 running 16x gen4.
However, there was an issue that x570 PCIE gen4 users encountered, that they seem to be correcting. If you had a gen4 NVMe + gen4 graphics card, every 300ms you would get a WHEA-LOGGER event and the computer would BSOD every 1-2 hours. After many responsive emails from their customer support, BIOS version f5d now allows a NVMe gen4 + graphics gen4 without crashing. There is still a WHEA-LOGGER message every 300ms which is noise, but that should be fixed with a future Intel Chipset update.
Yet the issue was the same: an implementation problem of the PCIE 4.0 specs for first-generation platforms. But thank you for feeling it necessary to respond with the simplistic obviology.
Given how none of that second paragraph was relevant to this article, you look suspiciously like you're repeating keywords to maintain the prevalence of specific, already-resolved issues pertaining to Intel's competitors in search-engine rankings. What a mess.
Actually, after doing a RMA on 3 of these boards to find the problem, I felt inclined to respond to the review. Others might be having this same issue. They will just need to update to the latest BIOS to avoid crashes with that combination of hardware. I don't why people like you feel the need to respond with conspiracy theories.
Sorry, man--but I installed a PCIe4 5700XT into my x570 Aorus Master back in July 2019--about 21 months or so. And I've never--not even once--had any of the problems you allude to...;) It's been solid as a rock. Someone has badly misled you--it's just common old anti-AMD FUD. Very immature hogwash.
Google "whea-logger and pcie 4". x570 was the first platform to experience this manifestation of the problems This was helpful in identifying the problem of specific gen4 NVMe drives conflicting with gen4 graphics cards. Speaking of immature, what a response... not just words, but the logic: somehow your 1-off, personal experience is indicative over broader reality? It's anti-AMD propaganda?
"I dont have a problem therefore the problem does not exist and anyone who says otherwise is immature, look how mature and sohpisticated i am! My farts smell like cinnamon!"
Is that with all the necessary security patches applied? AMD processors are more secure than their Intel competitors right now. AMD also offered PCIe 4.0 for nearly two years before Intel got in on the act. Finally, AMD CPUs are simply more efficient. Three for the search engines to chew on.
I don't understand your point you responding to what I wrote. This has nothing to do with AMD vs. Intel. I guess there is a MAGA-like AMD crown on here looking for conspiracies and confrontations.
As written above, the PCIE 4.0 specification implementation first found on x570 showed up on Intel's first go-around. If anything can be said, those working on the Intel platform motherboards learned nothing from prior work on the AMD platform. But whatever, read things through whatever lense you do.
I thought it was more of a BLM- like intel crowd that looks for any pro AMD comment and tries to railroad it into the ground while dismissing whatever merit the original comment may have had
I'm dissapointed that these newer boards keep cutting down on I/O. This board only offers 3 PCIe X16 slots, the third is only x4 and the second cuts half the bandwidth from the first slot despite multi GPU being long dead. So if you had, say, a sound card and a capture card, you'd have to cut your GPU slot bandwidth in half AND have one of the cards right up against the GPU cooler.
IMO the best setup would have all the x1/x4 slots ont he bottom of the motherboard so you can use a tiriple slot GPU and still have 3 other cards with room between for breathing, with all the bottom slots fed fromt he chipset not the CPU.
And for those whoa re going to ask: "why do you want more expansion everything is embedded now blah blah". If you only have a GPU and dont use the other slots that's why you have mini ITX, or micro ATX if you want a bigger VRM. Buying a big ATX board for a single expansion card is a waste.
While I am sure they'd love to sell you everything you're asking for, I'm less convinced you'd be ready to pay the price.
You can't get anything but static CPU PCIe lane allocations out of a hard wired motherboard, with bi/tri/quad-furication already being a bonus. You need a switch on both ends for flexibility.
That's what a PCH basically is, which allows you to oversubscribe the ports and lanes.
In the old 2.0 days PCIe switch chips were affordable enough ($50?) to put next to the CPU and gain full multiple x16 slots (still switched), but certainly not without a bit of latency overhead and some Watts of power.
All those PCIe switch chip vendors seem to have been bought up by Avago/Broadcom who have racked up prices, probably less because they wanted to anger gamers, but because these were key components in NVMe based storage appliances where they knew how much they could charge (mostly guessing here).
And then PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 are likely to increase motherboard layout/trace challenges, switch chip thermals or just generally price to the point, where going for a higher lane-count workstation or server CPU may be more economical and deliver the full bandwidth of all lanes.
You can get PCIe x16 cards designed to hold four or eight M.2 SSDs that contain such a PCIe switch. Their price gives you some idea of the silcon cost while I am sure they easily suck 20 Watts of power, too.
If you manage to get a current generation GPU with PCIe 4.0, that gives you PCIe 3.0 x16 equivalent performance even at x8 lanes. That's either enough, because you have enough VRAM, or PCI 4.0 x16 won't be good enough either. At both 16 or 32GByte/s PCIe is little better than a hard disk, when your internal VRAM delivers north of 500GB/s...because that's what it takes to drive your GPU compute or the game.
The premium for the ATX form factor vs a mini ITX is pretty minor and I couldn't care less how much of the tower under my desk is filled by the motherboard. I tend to go with the larger form factors quite simply because I value the flexibility and the ability to experiment or recycle older stuff. And it's much easier to manage noise with volume.
Boards like the gigabyte X570 elite exist, which have a plethora of USB ports and multiple additional expansion ports none of which sap bandwidth from the main port.
This master is a master class is taking money for looking "cool" and offering nothing of value.
Agreed, that layout is a big mess and rather defeats the point of having an ATX board - but then a huge number of these are just going to go into systems that have one GPU and nothing else, but the buyer wants ATX just because that's what they're used to 🤷♂️
Not completely the motherboards fault though. There are only 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes from the CPU. 4 for IO and 16 for graphics. There are no general purpose PCIe 4.0 lines off the Z590 chipset, and the DMI link is wider, but still just PCIe 3.0. When Intel starts putting general purpose PCIe 4.0 lanes on the chipset (690?), a lot of those issues would be resolved. Otherwise, it's a bit of a wonky workaround to shift things for one generation.
Unfortunately GB BIOS is not that stellar ? And why does this mobo have a fan to cool the 10G LAN chip ? I do not see that with some other boards like X570 Xtreme, X570 Prestige Creation and Maximus XIII Extreme.
Not sure if this is normal (never seen it with anything from ASUS) but when the board is powered on and you press DEL to enter BIOS it takes up to 35 seconds before it actually opens the BIOS application. Then, unless I enable "Fastboot (Not Ultra Fast) it can take 38 seconds before Windows starts loading. something seems amiss here.
If I understand this correctly, if Gigabyte had chosen not to go with the plastic cover over the I/O and VRM area, they could have gone with passive cooling for the 10Gbe NIC? :thonk:
While a cover without a fan is probably a bad idea, a cover with a fan is likely to make cooling more efficient.
The PHY part of the AQC-107 needs quite a bit of power when it operates at 10GBit/s speeds sustained across a 100m CAT7 cable without EEE or green Ethernet coming to the rescue. I've never been able to find a number, only that Aquantia was proud to use significantly less then the >10Watts that the 10Gbase-T competition required at the time.
Their PCIe NICs have a significant passive heat sink which does get hot under load.
I guess I'd also prefer a large passive heat sink because I use big slow fans on my cases to create airflow. But with these Rocket Lake aberrations gamers may resort to water cooling and that would leave too little of an airflow around the AQC107 to work properly... A variable speed fan might just keep things safe... until it's clogged by dust. But by then the warranty has most likely expired.
I do have to ask, do you think you could get the same power draw/ clocks on something like a 9900k compared to a 10900k or 11900k "ik the 11900k is a new achritecture" cause frankly I don't see the point to buy a 11900k over something like a 9900k other than PCIe gen 4 and maybe integrated 10gb lan but I can get a 60$ adapter anyway.
'When we overclocked the GIGABYTE Z590 Aorus Master'
1) Intel just recently eliminated its overclocking warranty program.
2) Overclocking an already inefficient CPU (Rocket Lake, given its 14nm construction) seems even more unwise than overclocking in the first place (given today's sophisticated boost algorithms and the lack of headroom).
The App Centre software is riddled with Trojans (28 found by MBAM), it is a piece of garbage and will disable Windows Update and totally screw up your system. Starting SIV for whatever reason invokes Windows Update, then disables it, you can no longer get updates and the process - windowsupdate is no longer visible under services. It has so much bloated malware running in the background that my i7 11700K is at 14% CPU load when I am doing nothing. Temperatures for the CPU sit at high 60C- mid 70C. Uninstall all Gigabyte software . malware and my PC is back and running at 40-50C. Also, the BIOS, unless Fastboot is enabled, it will sit there for at the POST screen for 38 seconds before even attempting to start Windows, I thought Asus made some junk, but Gigabyte leave them way behind, the worst garbage bundled with a motherboard ever, they even have the APP CENTRE configured to be downloaded and installed by default via the BIOS, never seen anything like it with any other motherboard. Disgusting for a product costing this much.
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39 Comments
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gsuburban - Wednesday, April 28, 2021 - link
These Z590 boards are very stable depending you your settings but out of the box, they are solid. Lots of features but not enough USB-C 20 mbps ports/headers. For that matter, there are lots of cases that are way behind in their USB-C designs too. I can however conclude the cost of this chipset is far over priced for the value received. These Z chipsets used to sell for $140 or so but to think another $200 to $300 makes the new boards worth their salt is a full bubble off plumb.YB1064 - Wednesday, April 28, 2021 - link
$400 motherboard with no dual 10GbE NIC or Thunderbolt? No thanks.KimGitz - Sunday, May 2, 2021 - link
I agree. Intel should really integrate Thunderbolt in all their CPUs. Even Alder Lake-S will require a discrete Thunderbolt controller sadly. Dual 10GbE NICs should be standard in premium boards.MDD1963 - Wednesday, April 28, 2021 - link
413 watts from the wall at 5.2 GHz....; good Lord!Spunjji - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
Lava LakeGeoffreyA - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
Or Volcano L.Linustechtips12#6900xt - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
honestly I wonder how far away we are from our normal pcs just being space heaters lol. XDGeoffreyA - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
Just wait till they reach the level of AC from "The Last Question," then they might need hyperspace to operate.Oxford Guy - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
Considering that Intel eliminated its overclocking warranty it seems the company doesn't want people to overlock.Linustechtips12#6900xt - Monday, May 3, 2021 - link
well just because they eliminated a warranty option may just mean no one was buying it, for intel to truly be competitive you have to oc, anyone in the tech space and especially intel. I think sorta understands that rn with the current setting of ryzen.Oxford Guy - Thursday, May 6, 2021 - link
'well just because they eliminated a warranty option may just mean no one was buying it'I'll buy that for a dollar.
JVC8bal - Wednesday, April 28, 2021 - link
Overall, I am happy with this product. DDR-4400, overclocked 11900k at 5.1ghz all cores, gen4 NVMe SSD, 3080 running 16x gen4.However, there was an issue that x570 PCIE gen4 users encountered, that they seem to be correcting. If you had a gen4 NVMe + gen4 graphics card, every 300ms you would get a WHEA-LOGGER event and the computer would BSOD every 1-2 hours. After many responsive emails from their customer support, BIOS version f5d now allows a NVMe gen4 + graphics gen4 without crashing. There is still a WHEA-LOGGER message every 300ms which is noise, but that should be fixed with a future Intel Chipset update.
skaurus - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
You talking about AMD chipset issue, but this motherboard is based on Intel chipset. Completely another story.JVC8bal - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
Yet the issue was the same: an implementation problem of the PCIE 4.0 specs for first-generation platforms. But thank you for feeling it necessary to respond with the simplistic obviology.Spunjji - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
Given how none of that second paragraph was relevant to this article, you look suspiciously like you're repeating keywords to maintain the prevalence of specific, already-resolved issues pertaining to Intel's competitors in search-engine rankings. What a mess.JVC8bal - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
Actually, after doing a RMA on 3 of these boards to find the problem, I felt inclined to respond to the review. Others might be having this same issue. They will just need to update to the latest BIOS to avoid crashes with that combination of hardware. I don't why people like you feel the need to respond with conspiracy theories.WaltC - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
Sorry, man--but I installed a PCIe4 5700XT into my x570 Aorus Master back in July 2019--about 21 months or so. And I've never--not even once--had any of the problems you allude to...;) It's been solid as a rock. Someone has badly misled you--it's just common old anti-AMD FUD. Very immature hogwash.JVC8bal - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
Google "whea-logger and pcie 4". x570 was the first platform to experience this manifestation of the problems This was helpful in identifying the problem of specific gen4 NVMe drives conflicting with gen4 graphics cards. Speaking of immature, what a response... not just words, but the logic: somehow your 1-off, personal experience is indicative over broader reality? It's anti-AMD propaganda?TheinsanegamerN - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
"I dont have a problem therefore the problem does not exist and anyone who says otherwise is immature, look how mature and sohpisticated i am! My farts smell like cinnamon!"silverblue - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
Is that with all the necessary security patches applied? AMD processors are more secure than their Intel competitors right now. AMD also offered PCIe 4.0 for nearly two years before Intel got in on the act. Finally, AMD CPUs are simply more efficient.Three for the search engines to chew on.
JVC8bal - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
I don't understand your point you responding to what I wrote. This has nothing to do with AMD vs. Intel. I guess there is a MAGA-like AMD crown on here looking for conspiracies and confrontations.As written above, the PCIE 4.0 specification implementation first found on x570 showed up on Intel's first go-around. If anything can be said, those working on the Intel platform motherboards learned nothing from prior work on the AMD platform. But whatever, read things through whatever lense you do.
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
I thought it was more of a BLM- like intel crowd that looks for any pro AMD comment and tries to railroad it into the ground while dismissing whatever merit the original comment may have hadTheinsanegamerN - Wednesday, April 28, 2021 - link
I'm dissapointed that these newer boards keep cutting down on I/O. This board only offers 3 PCIe X16 slots, the third is only x4 and the second cuts half the bandwidth from the first slot despite multi GPU being long dead. So if you had, say, a sound card and a capture card, you'd have to cut your GPU slot bandwidth in half AND have one of the cards right up against the GPU cooler.IMO the best setup would have all the x1/x4 slots ont he bottom of the motherboard so you can use a tiriple slot GPU and still have 3 other cards with room between for breathing, with all the bottom slots fed fromt he chipset not the CPU.
And for those whoa re going to ask: "why do you want more expansion everything is embedded now blah blah". If you only have a GPU and dont use the other slots that's why you have mini ITX, or micro ATX if you want a bigger VRM. Buying a big ATX board for a single expansion card is a waste.
abufrejoval - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
While I am sure they'd love to sell you everything you're asking for, I'm less convinced you'd be ready to pay the price.You can't get anything but static CPU PCIe lane allocations out of a hard wired motherboard, with bi/tri/quad-furication already being a bonus. You need a switch on both ends for flexibility.
That's what a PCH basically is, which allows you to oversubscribe the ports and lanes.
In the old 2.0 days PCIe switch chips were affordable enough ($50?) to put next to the CPU and gain full multiple x16 slots (still switched), but certainly not without a bit of latency overhead and some Watts of power.
All those PCIe switch chip vendors seem to have been bought up by Avago/Broadcom who have racked up prices, probably less because they wanted to anger gamers, but because these were key components in NVMe based storage appliances where they knew how much they could charge (mostly guessing here).
And then PCIe 3.0 and 4.0 are likely to increase motherboard layout/trace challenges, switch chip thermals or just generally price to the point, where going for a higher lane-count workstation or server CPU may be more economical and deliver the full bandwidth of all lanes.
You can get PCIe x16 cards designed to hold four or eight M.2 SSDs that contain such a PCIe switch. Their price gives you some idea of the silcon cost while I am sure they easily suck 20 Watts of power, too.
If you manage to get a current generation GPU with PCIe 4.0, that gives you PCIe 3.0 x16 equivalent performance even at x8 lanes. That's either enough, because you have enough VRAM, or PCI 4.0 x16 won't be good enough either. At both 16 or 32GByte/s PCIe is little better than a hard disk, when your internal VRAM delivers north of 500GB/s...because that's what it takes to drive your GPU compute or the game.
The premium for the ATX form factor vs a mini ITX is pretty minor and I couldn't care less how much of the tower under my desk is filled by the motherboard. I tend to go with the larger form factors quite simply because I value the flexibility and the ability to experiment or recycle older stuff. And it's much easier to manage noise with volume.
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, April 30, 2021 - link
Boards like the gigabyte X570 elite exist, which have a plethora of USB ports and multiple additional expansion ports none of which sap bandwidth from the main port.This master is a master class is taking money for looking "cool" and offering nothing of value.
Spunjji - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
Agreed, that layout is a big mess and rather defeats the point of having an ATX board - but then a huge number of these are just going to go into systems that have one GPU and nothing else, but the buyer wants ATX just because that's what they're used to 🤷♂️Linustechtips12#6900xt - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
AGREED, my b450m pro 4 has like 4 USB 3, 1 USB-a 10gbps, 1 USB-c 10gbps and 2 USB 2.0. frankly amazing io and i couldn't appreciate it moreMolor1880 - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
Not completely the motherboards fault though. There are only 20 PCIe 4.0 lanes from the CPU. 4 for IO and 16 for graphics. There are no general purpose PCIe 4.0 lines off the Z590 chipset, and the DMI link is wider, but still just PCIe 3.0. When Intel starts putting general purpose PCIe 4.0 lanes on the chipset (690?), a lot of those issues would be resolved. Otherwise, it's a bit of a wonky workaround to shift things for one generation.Silver5urfer - Wednesday, April 28, 2021 - link
Unfortunately GB BIOS is not that stellar ? And why does this mobo have a fan to cool the 10G LAN chip ? I do not see that with some other boards like X570 Xtreme, X570 Prestige Creation and Maximus XIII Extreme.TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
Gigabyte BIOS is fine, the UI is a tad clunky, but hey it's a huge leap from BIOSes from the core 2 era. Just takes a little getting used to.Richy65 - Sunday, June 6, 2021 - link
Not sure if this is normal (never seen it with anything from ASUS) but when the board is powered on and you press DEL to enter BIOS it takes up to 35 seconds before it actually opens the BIOS application. Then, unless I enable "Fastboot (Not Ultra Fast) it can take 38 seconds before Windows starts loading. something seems amiss here.meacupla - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
If I understand this correctly, if Gigabyte had chosen not to go with the plastic cover over the I/O and VRM area, they could have gone with passive cooling for the 10Gbe NIC?:thonk:
abufrejoval - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
While a cover without a fan is probably a bad idea, a cover with a fan is likely to make cooling more efficient.The PHY part of the AQC-107 needs quite a bit of power when it operates at 10GBit/s speeds sustained across a 100m CAT7 cable without EEE or green Ethernet coming to the rescue. I've never been able to find a number, only that Aquantia was proud to use significantly less then the >10Watts that the 10Gbase-T competition required at the time.
Their PCIe NICs have a significant passive heat sink which does get hot under load.
I guess I'd also prefer a large passive heat sink because I use big slow fans on my cases to create airflow. But with these Rocket Lake aberrations gamers may resort to water cooling and that would leave too little of an airflow around the AQC107 to work properly... A variable speed fan might just keep things safe... until it's clogged by dust. But by then the warranty has most likely expired.
gizmo23 - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
"users looking to overclock Rocket Lake ... will need ... premium cooling"Understatement of the year!
Linustechtips12#6900xt - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
I do have to ask, do you think you could get the same power draw/ clocks on something like a 9900k compared to a 10900k or 11900k "ik the 11900k is a new achritecture" cause frankly I don't see the point to buy a 11900k over something like a 9900k other than PCIe gen 4 and maybe integrated 10gb lan but I can get a 60$ adapter anyway.Oxford Guy - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
Premium tinnitus.Linustechtips12#6900xt - Wednesday, May 19, 2021 - link
makes senseOxford Guy - Thursday, April 29, 2021 - link
'When we overclocked the GIGABYTE Z590 Aorus Master'1) Intel just recently eliminated its overclocking warranty program.
2) Overclocking an already inefficient CPU (Rocket Lake, given its 14nm construction) seems even more unwise than overclocking in the first place (given today's sophisticated boost algorithms and the lack of headroom).
Richy65 - Sunday, June 6, 2021 - link
The App Centre software is riddled with Trojans (28 found by MBAM), it is a piece of garbage and will disable Windows Update and totally screw up your system. Starting SIV for whatever reason invokes Windows Update, then disables it, you can no longer get updates and the process - windowsupdate is no longer visible under services. It has so much bloated malware running in the background that my i7 11700K is at 14% CPU load when I am doing nothing. Temperatures for the CPU sit at high 60C- mid 70C. Uninstall all Gigabyte software . malware and my PC is back and running at 40-50C. Also, the BIOS, unless Fastboot is enabled, it will sit there for at the POST screen for 38 seconds before even attempting to start Windows, I thought Asus made some junk, but Gigabyte leave them way behind, the worst garbage bundled with a motherboard ever, they even have the APP CENTRE configured to be downloaded and installed by default via the BIOS, never seen anything like it with any other motherboard. Disgusting for a product costing this much.