GIGABYTE Z490 AORUS Ultra (Intel LGA1200/Z490/ATX/Intel 2.5G LAN/3xM.2 Thermal Guard/SATA 6Gb/s/USB 3.2 Gen 2/Intel Wi-Fi 6//Realtek ALC1220-VB/RGB Fusion/Gaming Motherboard)

First off, i've had my share of issues with this motherboard.-audio in the back doesn't work it never did since i got the board-internet gets randomly disconnected-gigabyte support is pretty much none existent-amazon wants to refund the order and or give me 20% to KEEP a defective motherboard but not replacementDo yourself a favor you want to buy pc parts got to Canada computer or Newegg because Amazon has no guidelines to help regarding this and they won't even attempt to troubleshoot the issue with you.Has for the board, i don't care about the audio itself but if you pay 350$ for a board it better work.So for me, i think i will go back with ASUS and i won't be buying from amazon when it comes to PC parts.Because this was a very disappointing experience on there part and i honestly felt like they did not even try.-

Quite happy with the features and ease of install, however the PCIE slots did not work with GPU upon install. I had to boot with the onboard video and update the BIOS before my GPU was detected in any PCIE slot. Do yourself a favour and save the 4 hours of troubleshooting I did!

The box and everything felt like if they were opened before and there's scuff on the motherboard.

I bought this board to use with my new I7-10700k. Initially, I was a bit skeptical about Gigabyte, just because I have always stood by ASRock for good mid-range boards. This board looks great, and has all the features I was looking for, and what you would expect from a Z490 board. I'm not a super duper tech savvy guy when it comes to ALL the features of the board, so I will stick with what I know.Pros:Nice lighting on the board, and overall great looking boardAll the Sata ports (6) and M.2 ports that I need (3 if you count the PCIE x16 likely taken by GPU tho)Arrived with zero defects!Easy setup overall! Had everything up and running with little effort overall* See below for more on this..Cons:1) I couldn't find anywhere in the instructions that mention this, but by default the board is configured to dump you off with an error just after the Aorus logo appears (nothing to boot to). I had Win10 Pro on an SSD, and another regular HDD plugged in, but the system didnt recognize them. This was worrisome, as I expected it to boot straight to Windows. The logical solution is to go into the bios and click the boot sequence, but the system didn't show anything there. Ill spare the other details but long story short, you have to go into the CSM settings, and enable Legacy options to boot to... When you do that, save and restart, you can then go back into the bios and set the boot priority, and it was pretty much smooth sailing from there. My complaint here is there being no mention of this procedure.2) CPU VOLTAGE..... This one really bothers me, and is the entire reason I dropped a star.. After doing some tests in a couple CPU demanding games (Planet Coaster, and Total War: Rome 2), everything was quite stable, and temps were sitting at a cool 54C max... Using CPU-Z, Real-Temp, and Hardware Monitor, I noticed though that my VCORE Voltage was spiking as high as 1.66V !?!?!??! That seems a bit insane to me... Im shocked that my temps werent higher. By default the Aorus Ultra board sets the VCore to an adaptive mode, and I feel that it is WAY over generous with that... However, I will say that it is VERY easy to fix.. Just go into the Bios and disable the adaptive voltage and set it to say 1.35-1.38V and try that as a fixed voltage, or if you prefer, mess with the LLC's and offsets to remedy depending on your comfort level. It upset me that they would ship out a board in a configuration that could relatively quickly kill your CPU if left alone (at least in my understanding). I get that some silicon performs better than others and such, but 1.66V?!?! even 1.5 is too much lol I'm not even comfortable with anything above 1.4V, regardless of temps.Overall I am quite happy with the board, and would absolutely recommend it to anyone out there! Just make a quick decision on how to remedy the adaptive Vcore situation. Money well spent! If you haven't used a Gigabyte board before, be ready for a bit of a learning curve with the bios. There is a LOT to play with :), but thats a + in my book. It looks great, and so far performs great!

Overwall the motherboard is fairly nice. The craftsmanship and attention to detail is very nice. There are also a TON of features inside the bios HOWEVER, This and other high end gigabyte motherboards have a massive coil whine issue coming from the vrms that they use. You get a high pitched squeeling noise regardless of what youre doing on the system. I originally got the Aorus Master which had the same issue, Got this one as a replacement and the issue was WORSE. It was to the point where it was actually uncomfortable to sit at the desk and hurt my hears. Replaced this one with the ASUS Hero and not a single issue or peep coming from it. Gigabyte is not quite there yet with their products. Will probably give them another shot in another 5 years when i decide to upgrade again.