T
here aren’t many options below £200
at the moment if you want a Z590
motherboard with the cooling and power
circuitry needed to properly push Intel’s K-series
CPUs, while keeping your PCI-E 4 SSD cool.
Gigabyte’s Z590 Vision G comes close, though,
costing just over £220, but sporting some decent
credentials and a funky white colour scheme.
The power circuitry offers 12 phases for the
CPU, which is two more than its mini-ITX sibling,
the Z590i Vision D, and it has a pair of heatsinks
linked with a heatpipe. One has fins, while the
second is a block of aluminium at the top of the
PCB to aid VRM cooling.
This did a reasonable job, with the VRMs staying below
70°C in our stress test despite Intel’s
Adaptive Boost Technology being
enabled on our Core i9-11900K. We’ve
seen cooler results, though, probably
because half of the finned heatsink is
hidden within the I/O shroud, which isn’t
the best place to get rid of its heat.
Meanwhile, there’s an impressive
count of four M.2 ports, each covered
with a heatsink, and the top three ports
support PCI-E 4. We suggest using the
top slot if you have a single SSD, as the
two slots below it sit under a single large
heatsink, requiring you to remove your
graphics card to access them.
In addition, an SSD in the top slot won’t
be at the mercy of any warm exhaust
air your graphics card expels. The top
heatsink kept our PCI-E 4 SSD at a steady
66°C under load, which is a tad warm
compared with the competition but still
well away from throttling.
Like other Gigabyte Vision boards
we’ve seen this year, there’s very littleREVIEWS / MOTHERBOARDS
SPEC
Chipset
Intel Z590
CPU socket
Intel LGA1200
Memory support
4 slots: max 128GB DDR4
(up to 5333MHz)
Expansion slots
One 16x PCI-E 4, two 16x PCI-E 3
Sound
8-channel Realtek ALC4080
Networking
1 x Intel 2.5 Gigabit LAN
Cooling
Six 4-pin fan headers, VRM
heatsinks, M.2 heatsinks
Ports
6 x SATA 6Gbps 3 x M.2 PCI-E 4, 1 x
M.2 PCI-E 3/SATA 6Gbps, 2 x USB 3.1
Type-A, 2 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 1 x USB
3.1 Type-C header, 2 x USB 3, 2 x USB
2, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out
Dimensions (mm)
300 x 244ATX Z590 MOTHERBOARD
GIGABYTE Z590
VISION G /£221 inc VAT
SUPPLIER cclonline.comRGB lighting apart from a subtle strip on the I/O shroud.
However, this board is geared towards clean builds and
creators, rather than gamers who want to still see their
motherboard when they close their eyes.
That said, if you do want to give your retinas some
action, there are four RGB headers catering for 3-pin and
4-pin connectors.
There have been some cuts to the specifications to keep
the price reasonable though. The Z590i Vision D costs £50
more, which buys you Wi-Fi and Thunderbolt 4 support,
which are sadly lacking on the Z590 Vision G. Apart from
Q-Flash Plus, Gigabyte’s version of USB BIOS Flashback,
there are precious few overclocking and testing tools too,
but again, this isn’t really the focus of the board.
What you do get are eight Type-A USB ports on the rear
I/O panel, plus two Type-C ports and a USB 3.1 Type-C
header. There’s 2.5 Gigabit LAN and Realtek ALC4080
audio as well, although fan headers sit at a rather average
count of six.
Gigabyte’s Windows software is also really well
designed, with special mention going to the System
Information Viewer, which provides highly granular control
over fan speeds and even allows you to choose alternative
temperature inputs to control them, rather than just
the CPU.c
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