Gigabyte Z690 AORUS ULTRA (DDR5) Motherboard Review

The box and packaging is smaller than I expected. You get the usual user’s manual, installation guide, a Gigabyte AORUS case badge, 3 pairs of SATA cables, 4 sets of M.2 screws, WiFi antenna, and a drivers disc. Interestingly, there’s also a pair of temperature probes and a RGB extenstion cable.

The Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Ultra Motherboard

The motherboard is feature-rich and comes in a matte black finish. The weight of the board is heavier than most I’ve come across, and this is because of the Full Cover heat shield with Fins-Array II covering the I/O hood, the Mosfets and VRMs, as well as the M.2 connectors for the SSDs.

The DDR5 DIMMS slots feature Gigabyte’s Memory Armor and comes with a surface mount design and shielded memory routing. It can support memory speeds of up to DDR5-6200 (OC). Please take note: The DDR5 memory slot is NOT compatible with DDR4 ram. 

The board also comes with 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 steel slot and 2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slot. I can confirm the PCIE 5.0 slot is backward compatible with PCIE 4.0 graphic cards and/other expansion cards.

The I/O panel is completely covered by the shround displaying the Tacihi logo, which of course comes with RGB. The 4 little red squares located on the bottom left-hand corned of the board are the high end audio WIMA Caps. There’s also an internal independent SATA & USB Ports for extra secutiry. Once this feature is activated from BIOS setting, the independent SATA & USB port is cutoff from other ports to prevent malwares and ransomware from accessing.

A Closer Look

Near the top of the board, you’ll find the power button, dianostic LEDs, and a bunch of fan and RGB headers. Towards the bottom, you’ll notice there’s a clear CMOS button, QFlash button and a ton of headers for extra fans, RGB, USB and audio.

There are 1 x 8-pin and 1 x 4-pin PCIE power connectors on the top left-hand corner of the board. The board offers 16+1+2 digital VRM design with a 105A power stage. This will give the extra stability while overclocking.

For storage, it comes with 4 x M.2 PCIE Gen4x4 and 6 x SATA3 ports for SSDs. One interesting feature is the M.2 Raid function. If you install all 3 x PCIE Gen4 (2nd Gen) SSDs together, each with 7000 MB/s, you can get unparalleled sequential Read/Write performance of up to 21053 and 15499 MB/s respectively.

For connectivity, it comes with the Intel 2.5GbE LAN, WIFI 6 support, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 TYPE-C, 4 x USB 3.2 Gen 2, 6 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 and total of 8 x USB 2.0. Other features include a 120dB ALC4080 Hi-Res Audio with WIMA caps, Gigabyte’s RGB FUSION 2.0, Q-Flash Plus, Smart fan 6, as well as a 6-layer PCB.