The Box and Packaging
Inside the box, you get the usual installation guide, an information leaflet, a Gigabyte Q connector, 1 x spare thermal pad for your SSD, 1 x SATA cable, and 1 x Ultra-high gain WiFi antenna with magnetic base.
The Gigabyte Z790 AORUS Elite AX ICE Motherboard
The board uses a 6-Layer low loss, x2 Copper PCB and comes in a nice white finish. It features a Digital Twin 16+1+2 phases VRM design, giving you excellent power efficiency and stability.
To help cool the VRMs, Mosfets and SSDs, the board comes with Thermal Armor Advnaced as well as M.2 Thermal Guard L. There’s a row of RGB LEDs underneath the heatsink of the chipset.
The board comes with 4 x DDR5 DIMM slots, supporting memory speeds of up to DDR5-7600. The motherboard also features Shielded Memory Routing and Impedance-Optimized Topology.
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A Closer Look
There are 2 x 8-pin PCIE power connectors on the top left-hand corner of the board. Make sure these are connected to the power supply.
Expansion slots include 1 x PCIE 5.0 x16 UD (Ultra Durable steel slot) for your graphics card, 1 x PCIE 4.0 x16 slot and 1 x PCIE 3.0 x16 slot.
There’s a total of 6 x 4-pin fan headers on the board (2 at the top and 4 at the bottom), which is more than enough to install extra cooling fans if needed.
For storage, it comes 6 x SATA ports and 4 x PCIE Gen4x4 M.2 slots for SSDs. These M.2 slots feature Gigabyte’s EZ latch click, which allows users to mount your M.2 SSDs with ease. These M.2 slots are covered by their impressive-looking M.2 Thermal Guard L and Thermal Guard Ext. with full cover heat shield.
On the back I/O pannel, there’s 4 x USB 2.0 ports, connectors for the WiFi 6E antenna, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 ports (red), 1 x HDMI port, 1 x DisplayPort, 3 x USB 3.2 Gen1 ports (blue), 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20GB/s Type-C), 1 x 2.5GB LAN port, 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector, Line-out and Mic-in.
