The Box and Packaging
There isn’t much inside the box. You only get the usual installation guide, an information leaflet, a Gigabyte Q connector, 1 x SATA cable, and 1 x Ultra-high gain WiFi antenna with magnetic base.
The Gigabyte Z790M AORUS Elite AX ICE Motherboard
The Gigabyte Z790M AORUS Elite AX ICE uses a 6-Layer, x2 Copper white PCB with some black connectors. It’s one of only a few Micro-ATX motherboards on the market that features a white PCB. Most of the ones I come across at this price range, only come with black PCB with a few white/silver heatsinks.
It features a Digital Twin 16+1+1 power phases VRM solution, which will provide excellent power efficiency and stability.
The board features Gigabyte’s Thermal Armor Advanced with heatpipe, which helps to cool the VRMs, Mosfets and main SSD. There’s a few RGB LEDs underneath the heatsink of the chipset, and this controlled by Gigabyte’s RGB Fusion.
There are 4 x DDR5 DIMM slots supporting Intel XMP 3.0 standard, with memory speeds of up to DDR5-7600 OC. The motherboard features Shielded Memory Routing and Impedance-Optimized Topology. This helps enhance the performance of DDR5 memory with the best compatibility.
A Closer Look
There are 1 x 4-pin and 1 x 8-pin PCIE power connectors on the top left-hand corner of the board. Make sure these are connected to the power supply.
For storage, it get 6 x SATA ports and 3 x PCIE Gen4x4 M.2 slots for SSDs, with two of them featuring Gigabyte’s EZ latch click allowing users to mount your M.2 SSDs with ease.
There are 1 x 4-pin and 1 x 8-pin PCIE power connectors on the top left-hand corner of the board. Make sure these are connected to the power supply.
For storage, it get 6 x SATA ports and 3 x PCIE Gen4x4 M.2 slots for SSDs, with two of them featuring Gigabyte’s EZ latch click allowing users to mount your M.2 SSDs with ease.
On the back I/O pannel, there’s 4 x USB 2.0 ports, connectors for the WiFi 6E antenna, 1 x HDMI port, 1 x DisplayPort, 4 x USB 3.2 Gen1 ports (blue), 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2 ports (red), 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.
