26 OCTOBER2020|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE392
YES,IT’SANOTHERveryhigh-endInteel
Z490motherboard.Thecompatible10th-gen
CometLakechipshavebeenavailablefoora
fewweeksnow,buttrulyaffordableZ4 990
boards are still fewand farbetween.
That means if you want to upgradetto
Intel’slatestandgreatest,whilealsobeing
able to take advantage of overclockingoon
theK-serieschips,you’remuchmorelikely
toenduplookingatsomethinglikethe
AorusZ490Master:ametal-cladhulkof
anATXmotherboard.
PROTECTION DETAIL
Of course,its layers of armour are no bad
thing. On the front, theycontributetoa
cleaner,more premium look, with the three
clean-looking M.2 slot covers and PCH
heatsink combining to form adistinct
three-pronged pattern, which hides agood
chunk of the unsightly circuitry.There’s a
passive practical benefit as well, as the M.2
covers include alayer of heat-spreading
putty,which couldreduce throttling on
higher-speed SSDs. There’s also alayer of
this positioned below where the SSD sits,
specifically forlarger-capacity drives, which
include memory stacks on both sides.
The massive plates on the rear come in
handy,too.Normally when building aPC, it’s
best to install the CPU and memory on the
motherboard before adding it to the case,
but it’s possible to damage the circuitry on
the back if you press down toohardorare
resting it on an improper surface.
The Aorus Z490 Master’s metal
reinforcements prevent this by virtue of
being raised afew millimetres awayfrom
the delicatebits; the only drawback is that
you might need to remove any unused
mounting standoffs in your PC, as any
that don’t line up with the motherboard’s
actual mounting screws can get in the wayof
the plates. That’s not abig inconvenience,
however,,asyyou wouldn’t be usingggthose
standoffs anway.
GIGABYTEAorus
Z490Master
★★★★★
£370•From http://www.ebuyeer.com
VERDICT
ThishighlyequippedIntelboardeffectively
combinestoughnessandsmarts
ATXMOTHERBOARD
The il-to- st
themecontinues ith
metal reinforcement to
the PCI-E, RAM and evenPPSU
powersockets,thoughtheelatterare
moreofanaesthetictouchhinpractice;
onlyPCI-Ex16slotsreallybbenefit from
aantti-bbeenddinggmeeaassuureess,,aannddoonlyyifyyoouuleett
averyheavygraphicscardsitinonefora
longtime.Still,thisisundoubtedlyagood-
looking motherboard, especially with neat
little 3D-effect branding over the rear ports
cover and arelatively restrained touchof
RGB lighting on the PCH cover.
Like the similarly priced MSI MEG Z490
Aceand Asus ROG Maximus XII Hero (Wi-Fi)
(bothShopper390), this mass of PCHand
M.2 covers annoyingly obscures one of the
case mounting screw holes, although it is at
least much easier to access this than on the
Asus model: you only need to remove the
topM.2 cover with acouple of screws, not
dismantle half the array.
GO BIG
The Aorus Z490 Master is slightly strange in
that it doesn’t have any PCI-E x1 slots, only
three of the larger PCI-E x16 variety.That’s
still enough to get by:any x1 device will work
in an x16 slot, and while both Nvidia SLI and
AMD CrossFire are supported, it hasn’t been
financially sensible to use dual graphics cards
in years, so you should always have at least
one or two slots going spare.
Evidently,Gigabytedecided that the space
would be better used byytripple M.2 slots,,all of
t l td2 10 form
fcto a
well as the
m recomm n
280.Thisisasmany
aswe’veseenonany
motherboard, and as they
aall have both full PCI-E 3.0
ssuupppppoorttaanddRAIDccoomppaattibbilittyy,,
theymaketheAorusZ490Masteran
interesting option foranyone wanting to
leave behind SATA storage entirely.Onthat
note, there are areasonable six SATA ports
on the right edge,thoughsome of these will
be disabled when the M.2 slots are filled.
The classic SSD-plus-hard disk combo is
perfectly possible,justdon’t expecttofill a
full-tower case full of 3.5in drives.
Elsewhere,the hardware is abit more
straightforward, but suitably high end. There
are the usual four DDR4 RAMslots with room
forupto128GB (and, impressively,
overclocking up to 5,000MHz), along with
both USB3.1and Type-C headers forfront I/O
panel connections. Then there are the eight
cooling pin headers, including the main CPU
cooler header; more than enough forahefty
all-in-one cooler as well as afull set of fans.
Keen overclockers will also appreciatethe
integrated power and reset buttons, as well as
one of ourfavouritemotherboard features: an
LED display, which showsuseful codes for
identifying the causes of any errors.
STICKING POINT
Moving to the rear I/O panel, the Aorus Z490
Master is veryywell appppointed,,with four USB2,,
two USB3 anndthree USB3.1ports, plus one
The GigabyteAorus Z490 Mastercompetesonconnectivity
and overclocking performancewhile excelling in design,
and costing afew notes less than its rivals
