Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master Review: A Pricey Performer

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How We Test

Since this is the first Z390 board we’re testing, we updated the firmware on the Z370 board it replaces to support the same Core i9-9900K test processor. Old data fills the bottom half of the chart, including the average performance of our previous Core i7-8700K and AMD Ryzen 7 2700X tests.

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SoundIntegrated HD audio
NetworkIntegrated gigabit networking
Graphics DriverGeForce 399.24

The same platform that cooled the ten cores of our Core i9-7900X works equally well with the eight cores of the Core i9-9900K, as we’ll show in the overclocking evaluation on the next page.

Comparison Products

Benchmark Settings

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Synthetic Benchmarks & Settings
PCMark 8Version 2.7.613Home, Creative, Work, Storage, Applications (Adobe & Microsoft)
3DMark 13Version 4.47.597.0Skydiver, Firestrike, Firestrike Extreme Default Presets
SiSoftware SandraVersion 2016.03.22.21CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Cryptography, Memory Bandwidth
DiskSPD4K Random Read, 4K Random Write128K Sequential Read, 128K Sequential Write
Cinebench R15Build RC83328DEMOOpenGL Benchmark
CompuBenchVersion 1.5.8Face Detection, Optical Flow, Ocean Surface, Ray Tracing
Application Tests & Settings
LAME MP3Version 3.98.3Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s)
HandBrake CLIVersion: 0.9.9Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x265 mp4
BlenderVersion 2.68aBMW 27 CPU Render Benchmark, BMW 27 GPU Render Benchmark
7-ZipVersion 16.02THG-Workload (7.6GB) to .7z, command line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=9"
Adobe After Effects CCRelease 2015.3.0, Version 13.8.0.144PCMark-driven routine
Adobe Photoshop CCRelease 2015.5.0, 20160603.r.88 x64PCMark-driven routine (light and heavy)
Adobe InDesign CCRelease 2015.4, Build 11.4.0.90 x64PCMark-driven routine
Adobe IllustratorRelease 2015.3.0, Version 20.0.0 (64-bit)PCMark-driven routine
Game Tests & Settings
Ashes of the SingularityVersion 1.31.21360High Preset - 1920 x 1080, Mid Shadow Quality, 1x MSAACrazy Preset - 1920 x 1080, High Shadow Quality, 2x MSAA
F1 20152015 Season, Abu Dhabi track, RainMedium Preset, no AFUltra High Preset, 16x AF
Metro: Last Light ReduxVersion 3.00 x64High Quality, 1920 x 1080, High Tesselation, 16x AFVery High Quality, 1920 x 1080, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF
The Talos PrincipleVersion 267252Medium Preset, High Quality, High Tesselation, 4x AFUltra Preset, Very High Quality, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF

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Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.
  • rantoc
    They say its SLI capable but yet have the same "stupid" 3 slots spacing resulting in the typical air starvation of the main card since it will be obstructed by the second card. Todays big custom air cooled cards are 2.5 to 3 pcie slots wide, not the old typical 2 pcie - When will the MB makers "evolve" to the new width of the cards for multigpu and who will be the first?
    Reply
  • Crashman
    21416964 said:
    They say its SLI capable but yet have the same "stupid" 3 slots spacing resulting in the typical air starvation of the main card since it will be obstructed by the second card. Todays big custom air cooled cards are 2.5 to 3 pcie slots wide, not the old typical 2 pcie - When will the MB makers "evolve" to the new width of the cards for multigpu and who will be the first?
    Even the founder's edition cards are only two slots, and most of the oversized cards are 2.5 slots. A 3-slot cooling design is a defective design, and such cards should be called out for that. We're already putting the top x16 slot in the case's 2nd slot hole to make space for oversized CPU coolers, voltage regulators and DIMM cooling, and there's a scarcity of 8-slot cases, so two three-slot cards at 4-slot spacing doesn't even make sense. For those reseaons, if I review a board with the 2nd x16 slot aligned to the case's 6th card hole, I'll probably just write it off as a bad idea.

    Reply
  • steverode1
    Will this board work with Windows 7?
    Reply
  • Crashman
    21504655 said:
    Will this board work with Windows 7?
    It's hard to say since you'd have to look up individual drivers for each device rather than using those supplied by the motherboard manufacturer:
    https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z390-AORUS-MASTER-rev-10#support-dl-driverBut I'd just assume...no.


    Reply
  • furkanagamak06
    Would this motherboard work if I had 2 NVMe SSDs and a SATA HDD?
    Reply
  • Crashman
    21540044 said:
    Would this motherboard work if I had 2 NVMe SSDs and a SATA HDD?

    Yes, with two NVMe drives you'd have four remaining SATA ports.
    Reply
  • gregg889
    Does anyone know if this Mobo ships with a bios that supports the latest CPU's? I was planning on getting a Intel - Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor and wasn't sure if this mobo has the bios to support it...
    Reply
  • Crashman
    21554397 said:
    Does anyone know if this Mobo ships with a bios that supports the latest CPU's? I was planning on getting a Intel - Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor and wasn't sure if this mobo has the bios to support it...
    Anything that says "Z390" does.
    Reply
  • gregg889
    21554436 said:
    21554397 said:
    Does anyone know if this Mobo ships with a bios that supports the latest CPU's? I was planning on getting a Intel - Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor and wasn't sure if this mobo has the bios to support it...
    Anything that says "Z390" does.

    Thank you so much for the fast reply and the answer to my question; this is my first time piecing together a PC and building it myself. I'm really excited to see how well this thing runs, http:// compared to my current PC.
    Reply
  • Crashman
    21554461 said:
    21554436 said:
    21554397 said:
    Does anyone know if this Mobo ships with a bios that supports the latest CPU's? I was planning on getting a Intel - Core i7-9700K 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor and wasn't sure if this mobo has the bios to support it...
    Anything that says "Z390" does.

    Thank you so much for the fast reply and the answer to my question; this is my first time piecing together a PC and building it myself. I'm really excited to see how well this thing runs, http:// compared to my current PC.
    That's quite a build. It makes me appreciate my free test kit a bit more :)

    Reply