Conclusion
Heavy-duty cooling around the VRM section, elegant and restrained RGB, solid layout, and excellent M.2 and audio support are all obvious plus point.The Master currently sits atop of the Aorus Z390 stack and offers a wonderfully-built board whose focus is on performance more than lighting.
Heavy-duty cooling around the VRM section, elegant and restrained RGB, solid layout, and excellent M.2 and audio support are all obvious plus points, but we would certainly change the location of the power button and suggest that dual GbE makes more sense at this price point.
You see, the Aorus Z390 Pro WiFi, priced £95 less at £180, offers the similar VRM cooling potential, WiFi, LAN, and mostly the same USB, so the question is whether spending significantly more is worth it?
Sure, there's better audio, more robust M.2 cooling (including a third slot), and that backside frame, though we do wonder if these are worth the extra outlay.
Make no mistake, the Aorus Z390 Master is a fine motherboard, particularly for the Core i9-9900K, but better value is to be found elsewhere, most notably in Aorus' own stable.
The Good The Bad Looks great
RGB restrained and elegant
Good overclocking potential
Triple M.2 heatsink-clad slots
Lots of USB 3.1 Gen 2
Excellent audio Power button location strange
Feels expensive
Dual GbE better?
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The Aorus Z390 Master is motherboard is available to purchase from Scan Computers.
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