First things first. This motherboard is a premium quality motherboard. Initially, my son was leaning towards the ROG Strix Z490 so we bought that. I however convinced him to give Gigabyte the chance and it did not disappoint. It was his first build and went flawlessly. So lets dig into the Pros and cons.
Pros:
* Compatible with 10th Gen Intel processors as well as 11th Gen ones.
* Awesome quality materials including the heatsinks, headers and IO shield.
* PCIe4 ready. This will make a difference in storage drives moving data around at faster rates as soon as 11th Gen Intel processors are released.
* Simple and awesome bios with easy setup as well as advanced options for power users.
* WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5 support.
* Ample USB 2 and USB3 as well as a couple M.2 slots for your killer SSDs.
Cons:
* No thunderbolt built in. However, this board is Thunderbolt ready with an included Thunderbolt header on the board. You just need to purchase an add-in board if you want this.
* Documentation could use a tad bit of improvement. It was a bit confusing to which 8 pin header we would connect the CPU power till we looked up a YouTube video that specifically told us to use the left one unless we had some weird cooling system needs. I believe adding such detail may help. Also, after the initial install, Bluetooth seemed flaky. Weird internet videos suggested miraculous fixes merely by unplugging the PSU and rebooting but that was not the cause. NOTE: To users running into Bluetooth not working issues, please take out the antennae included in the Aorus package and connect to your motherboard. It will fix your problems. For gigabyte, it may help if the docs had this detail in there somewhere.
The final build we did had a great 1TB NVMe M.2 SK Hynix Gold SSD. Both read and write speeds were excellent. Windows installed in about 4 minutes. All systems go. A bootup takes about 10 seconds, This is not from sleep but from a powered off state. Hope you have the same experience with your build! This board rocks with Windows 10!
| RAM | DDR4 |
|---|---|
| Memory Speed | 5000 MHz |
| Wireless Type | Bluetooth |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 6 |
