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  • El Sama - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    Comes with a solid VRM, unlike Asus fake Phases VRM.
  • TelstarTOS - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    This.
  • gavbon - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    It's a solid power delivery; nothing wrong with using doublers and GIGABYTE are very clear in their marketing too. I wish all the vendors followed this practice!
  • sonny73n - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    I went to Gigabyte website for this board and saw that they claim it’s a true 12 phase VRM.

    But Anandtech says “the GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Master is highly competitive with its power delivery design (doubled six-phase)”.

    So Gigabyte bullshit AGAIN. I hope your wish won’t come true.
  • iohlighi - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link

    There's a difference between using doublers, which are additional components to split a phase into two phases, and just adding two of each component to a single phase which is what people are referring to with asus here. With doublers, they are indeed out of phase with each other as needed to be considered a phase. The downside of doublers vs dedicated phases without doublers is there is no load/temp balancing between the two doubled phases because the controller sees it as just one.
  • JlHADJOE - Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - link

    A properly doubled 6-phase *is* a true 12-phase.

    If the output of the PWM is A B C D E F, then a Gigabyte puts a doubler on each PWM output, and an output stages on each of the doubler's outputs, so the final result becomes something like A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2 D1 D2 E1 E2 F1 F2. Each sub-phase is a proper time slice.

    ASUS on the other hand is sneaky and simply wired two output stages to each of the PWM's four output channels on their boards, so A B C D from the PWM simply becomes AA BB CC DD.
  • sonny73n - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    I’ve seen more fake phases VRM from Gigabyte than any others. Even tho Gigabyte claims this board has 12 true phases, I wouldn’t believe them. And sure Gigabyte boards can OC to 5Ghz but core voltage would be 1.5v, temp will be more than 100C and crash as soon as your game loads.

    Go to Newegg for buyers’ reviews. Gigabyte customer service as well as OCing ability are horrible.
  • sonny73n - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Sorry not all Gigabyte boards are as bad as I said. It’s only about 90% of them and this is not silicone lottery.
  • JlHADJOE - Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - link

    Gigabyte's Z390 Aorus line is legit (unlike their previous Z370 series). Buildzoid took a very in-depth look at this board and the VRMs get his seal of approval.

    https://youtu.be/6J7qnr0YNH8?t=571

    Linked timestamp is at start of VRM analysis
  • shaolin95 - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link

    nonsense...talking BS without actually researching. Go cry home Asus fanboy
  • spaceweasel - Monday, May 27, 2019 - link

    Solid 5.0Ghz at 38C, at idle, on my Aorus Master, with F8 BIOS. One of the best motherboards I have ever used.
  • 3dfx_Rampage - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    And yet a bottom of the barrel Asus board performed better. More phases does not automatically make a VRM better.
  • shaolin95 - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link

    hahahahaha BS...Asus you can cook on it but that is how butthurt Asus fanboys are. CAnt accept that on z390, Asus dropped the ball big time
  • Opencg - Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - link

    for all those phases it sure comes out alot slower than the asus boards
  • Cyruskain - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    "During the overclock testing on the Z390 Aorus Master, we had to take a slightly different approach due to some instability as we went through the multipliers with default power settings."

    Yes, yes, and yes. I bought this board back in November on Black Friday due to a great sale New Egg had on it (which surprises me that this review is as late as it is. This board is about 5 months old now). But I simply couldn't figure out how to overclock the CPU manually via BIOS on this board due to crashing loops. I ultimately settled on using the Appcenter EZTune software which placed my 9700k @ 5.1 and ~1.3v, although it fluctuates depending on load (of course). I'm happy enough with a software generated 5.1. But OCing this board shouldn't have been as annoying as it was.

    I'm actually surprised it was near bottom of the barrel for gaming fps though. Bummer. But I like the Mobo all things considered, especially the amount of USB ports it has.

    Oh, and it does have a solid VRM as El Sama stated.
  • gavbon - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    I'm currently testing the GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Pro WIFI (on the test bench) and the overclocking is pretty similar in experience. As I highlighted in the review, this board (and the Pro WIFI) are the only boards where I've had to adjust LLC and power settings to achieve 5-5.1 GHz.
  • Cyruskain - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    @gavbon I'm going to attempt to mirror the BIOS changes you did and see where that nets me. I also attempted to adjust the LLC alongside the freq. multiplier, but I continued to get crashing loops. However, there were things from the article you did that I didn't, so I'm curious to try it out. But, at the end of the day, the software netting me 5.1 isn't anything to scoff at. It's pretty impressive for software.
  • gavbon - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    At least the software gave you a stable overclock, to begin with! 5.1 GHz is certainly good, pretty awesome if you ask me!
  • sonny73n - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    You can OC GPU with software but I would recommend against OCing CPU with software, especially Gigabyte software. Google it!
  • ZedVile - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    I have done a bit of testing on this Motherboard both on the test bench and fully integrated into a build. Ring ratio seems to play a role with performance and defaults have changed through-out the bios revisions. Huge variations in performance, CPU voltage requirements and ring ratio defaults.

    Bios F6 defaulted the Ring ratio to 4.8 while later revisions have lowered the ratio to 4.7 and 4.6.

    I have experienced the best bench performance with the 9900k on F6 BIOS ring ratio 4.8 and at 5.0GHZ all core at 1.285 Volts. B-die at 4266 1.5v

    Passes Intel Burn Test very high and maximum. 5.2GHZ @ 1.375 also passes IBT very high on F6 bios.

    On the contrary bios F8e requires 1.325v @5.0GHZ and does not pass IBT @ maximum. Performance is also down if the ring ratio is not manually adjusted back up to 48.

    Buildzoid has a great vid on samsung B-die overclocking on the Z390 Master

    Over on the Gigabyte forum users have complained about XMP profiles and RAM compatibility throughout the bios revisions...

    @Gavin Which bios revision were you using, and did you test DPC latency & gaming perf with different bios revisions?
  • Timur Born - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    I have to keep ring ratio below x46 to stay stable overclocked.
  • gavbon - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    I tested DPC Latency on the latest 2 revisions (F7 and F8e). Retested the full suite on both revisions and didn't notice any significant differences. GIGABYTE has good hardware, just tetchy firmware
  • Timur Born - Thursday, March 21, 2019 - link

    I am confused by the supposed usage of "DPC Latency Checker" on Windows 10?! Do you use LatencyMon or how do you make it work?
  • gavbon - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    We use LatencyMon :)
  • Timur Born - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link

    I guessed so, which means this is just a typo in the text. Do you report maximum or average latencies and is this using the "Balanced" or "High Performance" Windows power profile?
  • Gasaraki88 - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    That gaming performance is pretty bad. A difference of 10+ frames between the best and worst board (this one) is a big different when you have the same cpu, gpu, and memory.
  • IndianaKrom - Saturday, March 23, 2019 - link

    I have this board and a 9900k, and the gaming performance is nothing like what they are getting in benchmarks (even my 7700k system was doing better than that). I wonder if it isn't because the BIOS defaults for this board actually respect the Intel turbo boost spec and will dial down the CPU clocks/energy back down to the rated TDP after a few seconds of load. I went in to BIOS and deliberately set P1/P2/P3 turbo power states to unlimited watts/duration so my CPU will turbo at its highest possible bins forever as long as the thermals are in check, but if you don't do that the board will clamp the CPU to 115w after 10 seconds and 95w after like 30 seconds IIRC.
  • Arbie - Friday, March 22, 2019 - link

    Even if the company's legal name is in all caps, that's just marketing hype and hard on the reader's eyes. I wouldn't indulge them by repeating it - which does them no favors anyway, as it looks gimmicky and cheap.
  • WickedMONK3Y - Monday, March 25, 2019 - link

    The performance of this board seems to vary greatly depending on the CPU used, and the BIOS revision that is on the board. F5 and F6 seem to be the best BIOS versions so far, I am running mine with F6 and a 9900K, and stuck in an 8700K to check these numbers and my performance was higher, but my girlfriends PC is running the same board on F8 with a 9700K and when I put in the 8700K the numbers are close to these. Scary how much a BIOS can affect performance on these boards.
  • VoodooRufus - Wednesday, March 27, 2019 - link

    Beefy power section, ESS Sabre DAC, gold plated audio connectors, dual 8-pin CPU power, and front USB-C. Very good aesthetics, integrated IO plate. VRM's run cool with minimal airflow. I love my Aorus Master. Stable and easy to tune. I mostly hate my Z68X-UD7-B3 in comparison.
  • sanasheikh - Tuesday, April 2, 2019 - link

    Coolest thing I have seen today. https://google.com
  • shaolin95 - Thursday, April 4, 2019 - link

    Nothing special??? Wow this website has gone downhill more than I thought...next what, you are going to praise Asus with their fake VRMs? Or MSI with their lack of iGPU support????
    For z390 nobody can touch Gigabyte and that has been confirmed by TRUE PRO reviewers/testers.
  • Native7i - Sunday, April 14, 2019 - link

    Any reasons why it posts worst fps in gaming?
  • mofongo7481 - Monday, April 15, 2019 - link

    Last paragraph - "Ultimately, the Z390 Aorus Master is a solidly product"
  • sasharr - Monday, July 29, 2019 - link

    Which one is FASTEST with 9900k -- the PRO (or Pro WiFi) or the MASTER (in single proc task mode)? Which one is fastest on your tests? Which one CAN BE the fastest (after tuning)? Thank you!
  • kryzmusic - Monday, July 6, 2020 - link

    Hi Gavin - I had a question regarding DPC Latency.

    I really like the bar chart you have comparing the motherboards DPC Latency. Is there an updated chart with Z490 motherboards out there somewhere? Or perhaps where I might look to find specific DPC latency specs for specific motherboards?

    I haven't been able to find much on DPC latency online for motherboards (or i'm just not looking in the right places) and was wondering specifically if you have results for the Asus ProArt Z490-CREATOR 10G motherboard?

    In any case, anymore resources on DPC latency across this new generation of Z490 boards would be great!

    Thanks for your time!
    Ryan

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