An image of Gigabyte's as yet unannounced Z690 Aorus Master motherboard was just leaked this morning on Twitter from @hw_reveal. The image shows a top view of the board, showcasing a new paint job for the Aorus Master line-up and a potent power delivery setup. The Z690 Aorus Master will be the successor to the Z590 variant and will support Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake platform.
(Image credit: Gigabyte)
The leaked image in question appears to be genuine, but the source of the leak is a recently created Twitter account, so until we get confirmation take any information relating to this image with a grain of salt.
The most noticeable change with the new motherboard is a brand new paint job featuring purple and blue accents and new graphics for the chipset heatsink and rear I/O cover. This is different from previous Aorus motherboards, which favored a more basic orange and silver theme.
The board's layout looks largely identical to its predecessor, the Z590 Aorus Master. Featuring the same E-ATX form factor, and similar large VRM heatsinks on the top and side. We can presume from this alone, that the Z690 Aorus Master will pack a heavy-duty power delivery setup.
The previous Z590 Master had 18+1 phases, with 90A smart power stages, effectively making it one of the most powerful VRM setups on the Z590 platform. Right now we can only assume that the new Z690 Aorus Master will feature a similar power delivery, or better.
To the right, we can see the four memory slots, and DDR5 branding next to the inward-most DIMM slot, letting us know this is a DDR5 supported board. We'll have to wait for official specs to see what memory speeds the Z690 Master is capable of.
Also visible on the board are the locations for three M.2 SSDs, which surround the top PCIe x16 slot. The top M.2 slot is covered by its own heatsink, meanwhile, the bottom two share a heatsink with the Z690 chipset to the right. In addition to the top x16 slot, there are two additional x16 slots to the bottom which appear to be wired in a 4 lane configuration.
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If history repeats itself, we can expect the Aorus Z690 Master to be one of Gigabyte's flagship boards on the Alder Lake platform, only surpassed by the Aorus Extreme and Tachyon (which is an overclocking exclusive board). This will along with PCIe Gen 5 support could make the new Aorus Master a very expensive motherboard in the Z690 platform.
