Wednesday, August 29th 2018
GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Elite Pictured, New Round of Branding Chaos Incoming
GIGABYTE is ready with its Z390 Aorus Elite motherboard. The name might suggest that it's the company's flagship product based on the Z390 chipset, but in reality, it's part of the company's new nomenclature that differentiates boards from different price-points. The current "Gaming 3, Gaming 5, and Gaming 7" series is going to be replaced. The cheaper "Gaming 3" extension will be replaced by "Elite." The slightly divergent "Ultra Gaming" extension gets replaced by "PRO." The mid-tier Gaming 5, on the other hand, extension is replaced by "Ultra." The high-end Gaming 7 tier is replaced by "Master," and the flagship Gaming 9 extension by XTREME. We've already seen one of these with the recent Aorus X399 XTREME TR4 motherboard.
Moving on to the product at hand, the Z390 Aorus Elite is a somewhat entry-tier product that's probably priced around the $150-mark, owing to the high chipset price and the higher CPU VRM requirements it mandates. We already count a 13-something-phase VRM (which could include phase-doubling). The "Gaming 3" extension historically lacked NVIDIA SLI support, and that carries over to the Z390 Aorus Elite. The second PCIe x16 slot on this board is electrical x4, and wired to the PCH. Storage connectivity, besides six SATA, includes two M.2 slots with x4 wiring, one of which includes a heatsink. GIGABYTE boards are known for good onboard audio implementations, and this board is no exception. It appears to have WIMA capacitors, ground-layer isolation, EMI shield over the CODEC, which very likely could be an ALC1220. USB 3.1 connectivity, including a type-C port, and 1 GbE interface driven by an i219-V could make for the rest of it. There's minimal RGB bling on board, but you'll get 2-3 aRGB headers.
Source:
VideoCardz
Moving on to the product at hand, the Z390 Aorus Elite is a somewhat entry-tier product that's probably priced around the $150-mark, owing to the high chipset price and the higher CPU VRM requirements it mandates. We already count a 13-something-phase VRM (which could include phase-doubling). The "Gaming 3" extension historically lacked NVIDIA SLI support, and that carries over to the Z390 Aorus Elite. The second PCIe x16 slot on this board is electrical x4, and wired to the PCH. Storage connectivity, besides six SATA, includes two M.2 slots with x4 wiring, one of which includes a heatsink. GIGABYTE boards are known for good onboard audio implementations, and this board is no exception. It appears to have WIMA capacitors, ground-layer isolation, EMI shield over the CODEC, which very likely could be an ALC1220. USB 3.1 connectivity, including a type-C port, and 1 GbE interface driven by an i219-V could make for the rest of it. There's minimal RGB bling on board, but you'll get 2-3 aRGB headers.
14 Comments on GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Elite Pictured, New Round of Branding Chaos Incoming
As for the phase doubling, it's not "which could include phase doubling", it's more like "it's guaranteed to be doubled". They all do it and they all lie about it. Really annoying.
Should just order that damn Z370 FTW from amazon at 119$ and be over with it.... :shadedshu:
Post-FIVR motherboard phases aren't driving as much current, and so you needn't spread it across like 16-phase (8 real) to stay cool/durable.
I don't get it why they can't use two letter "initials". And yeah, I kinda blame AMD here for ripping off Intel's naming scheme.
Why can't they name their series with round numbers? Like ZX200, ZX400, ZX600, ZX800, RT200, RT400 or RZ200, RZ400 etc. There are so many long term options that sound alright and are still distinctive.
Now we have X270 and X390...
XTREME-LY Unnecessary