HEXUS has reviewed two Intel Z490 chipset motherboards this summer, the Gigabyte Aorus Z490 Xtreme, and the MSI MPG Z490 Gaming Carbon Wi-Fi. Both were capable components, as they should be for the prices charged, but now Gigabyte has pushed the boat out for its most extravagant and extreme OC friendly 10th gen Intel Core CPU supporting motherboard yet, the Z490 Aorus Master WaterForce with updated AIO liquid cooling design.
In addition to the AIO 360 design, other key attractions of the new motherboard are; a 14-phase digital power design with each phase holding up to 90A, Xtreme Memory technology with an anti-interference design to improve memory overclocking and stability, top of the line audio, and feature rich shielded I/O.
Gigabyte reminds us that the 10th Gen Intel Core processors come with up to 10C/20T configuration and default TDP of up to 125W - that figure is for base clocked performance and thus with various Intel boost technologies in play power consumption can pass well beyond this wattage. This means that high-grade cooling is pretty essential for overclocking and getting the most out of your K processor. When under sustained loads it isn't just the processor that needs cooling the motherboard VRMs can get toasty and be another reason your system will throttle down. For this reason, Gigabyte has designed the Z490 Aorus Master WaterForce motherboard (updated) AiO CPU cooler with a heatpipe threaded block that covers the VRM section too.
Some further cooler specs you might like to know are; that the radiator uses triple 120mm dual-ball bearing fans, Gigabyte has equipped new generation 7.5 W/mK LAIRD Thermal Conductivity Pads, and the motherboard / cooler assembly out of the box requires just four screws to be fastened. The motherboard and AiO include syncable RGB LED lighting.
Official highlights of the Z490 Aorus Master WaterForce motherboard are as follows:
- Supports 10th Gen Intel Core Series Processors
- Dual Channel Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 4 DIMMs
- Intel Optane Memory Ready
- 14+1 Phases Digital VRM Solution with 90A Smart Power Stage and Tantalum Polymer Capacitors Array
- Shielded Memory Routing for Better Memory Overclocking
- AORUS CPU+VRM Liquid Cooler 360
- Onboard Intel Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax 2T2R & BT5 with Aorus Antenna
- 125dB SNR AMP-UP Audio with High-End ESS SABRE 9118 DAC, ALC1220 and WIMA Audio Capacitors
- Blazing Fast Intel 2.5GbE LAN with cFosSpeed
- USB TurboCharger for Mobile Device Fast Charge Support
- Triple Ultra-Fast NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 with Thermal Guards II
- RGB Fusion 2.0 with Multi-Zone Addressable LED Light Show Design, Support Addressable LED & RGB LED Strips
- Smart Fan 5 Features Multiple Temperature Sensors , Hybrid Fan Headers with Fan Stop and Noise Detection
- Q-Flash Plus Update BIOS without Installing the CPU, Memory and Graphics Card
You can pick through the full spec of the Z490 Aorus Master WaterForce motherboard on the official product page which has a comparison tool available too, so you can quickly check the differences in various motherboards you might be interested in.
This updated improved VRM cooling Z490 Aorus Master WaterForce motherboard is already available from retailers according to Gigabyte.
