Gigabyte Z790 AORUS Elite X WiFi7 Overview
Taking a first look at the Z790 AORUS Elite X WiFi7 it has a sort of black and silver design with a black PCB and then black and silver heatsinks. I’ve always felt like AORUS boards have this sleek and sophisticated look to them and that is true here with this board. For those wondering this is an ATX motherboard.
Starting at the CPU socket we have Intel’s LGA1700 socket which will support 12th, 13th, and 14th generation Intel Core processors. It is worth noting that the end of the release lever for the CPU socket has been flattened, which makes it easier to access and so your finger does not slide off of it.
Surrounding the CPU socket we have our power delivery components. Here we have a 16+1+2 twin digital power phase design. So for the CPU we have 8+8 phases in a parallel power design. The power stages here are 90A so you’ll have a total of 1440A available for the CPU.
Covering the power delivery components is are two large heatsinks. These heatsinks features an embedded 8mm heatpipe which connects them. The top part of the larger heatsink acts as a rear I/O cover and really brings the top half of the board together. Hiding in the top corner of the board are your two 8-pin EPS connectors.
Moving across the top of the board we have 4-pin optional and main CPU fan headers and a 3-pin addressable RGB header. When it comes to our memory slots we have 4 DDR5 slots which support DDR5 memory up to 8266 MHz! Along the edge of the board you’ll find your 24-pin ATX power connection, a USB 3.2 header, USB 3.2 gen 2 header, post code LED array, Thunderbolt headers, (for an add-in card), a clear CMOS button, and six SATA 6GB/s port which are at a 90-degree angle.
At the bottom of the board you’ll find the rest of your connectors and and buttons. From left to right you have your HD audio header, two 3-pin addressable RGB headers, a 4-pin standard RGB header, TPM header, two USB 2.0 ports, a Q-Flash Plus button, four 4-pin fan headers, your front panel headers, and a reset button.
The bottom half of the motherboard like most these days is characterized by heatsinks. The larger heatsink has the AORUS logo across it, while the the other one is just plain black. Removing these heatsinks we can see that we have four M.2 slots, these are all Gen4 or PCI-Express 4.0, so no Gen5 storage on this board.
Each of these heatsinks use a tool-less system, which Gigabyte is calling EZ-Latch Click. This allows you to easily remove the heatsinks by simply pressing on the latch and releasing the heatsink. When it comes to installing your M.2 drives you have Gigabyte’s EZ-Latch Plus, which is essentially the same thing. This is the best system I’ve seen to date for removing M.2 heatsinks and installing your drives.
When it comes to expansion slots you have a single PCI-Express x16 slot and two PCI-Express 4.0 x16 (x4 electrical) slots. The top slot features Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable PCIe Armor, which is seamless piece of metal that is screwed on to a dedicated backplate. The top slot also has their PCIe EZ-Latch system which is essentially a small tab that sits above your normal PCIe release latch. It is much easier to access, especially once you have a graphics card installed.
Moving to the rear I/O we have an integrated I/O shield that is just black and has the AORUS logo on it. When it comes to port and connections we have four USB 2.0 ports, WiFi 7 antenna connections, two USB 3.2 gen 2 ports, DisplayPort, HDMI, a USB 3.2 gen 2×2 Type-C port, three USB 3.2 gen 1 ports, 2.5G LAN, and audio connections.
