The Box and Packaging
Inside the box, you get the usual installation guide, an information leaflet, AORUS stickers, a Gigabyte Q connector, 2 x SATA cables, 1 x cable with a built-in micro speaker, 2 x thermal probes and 1 x Ultra-high gain WiFi antenna with Gigabyte’s WiFi EZ-Plug and magnetic base.
The Gigabyte Z890 AORUS ELITE X ICE Motherboard
The board uses a 8-Layer low loss, x2 Copper PCB and comes in a nice white finish. It features a Digital Twin 16+1+2 phases VRM design with 80A SPS, giving you excellent power efficiency and stability.
To help cool the VRMs, Mosfets and SSDs, the motherboard comes with Thermal Armor Advanced as well as M.2 Thermal Guard L and M.2 Thermal Guard Ext. which really helps to cool the SSDs. There’s a row of RGB LEDs underneath the heatsink of the chipset.
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 (UD Slot X steel slot) for your graphics card, 2 x PCIE 4.0 x16 slots. You also find a metal back plate for the main PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for enhanced durability, and the PCIe EZ-Latch Plus for easy installation and removal of GPUs.
There’s a total of 7 x 4-pin fan headers on the board (2 at the top, 2 on the side and 3 at the bottom), which is plenty if you want to install extra cooling fans.
The board comes with diagnostic LEDs, onboard reset, power-on, and Q-Flash BIOS buttons, as well as 4 x DDR5 DIMM slots, supporting XMP memory modules with speeds of up to DDR5-9500+.
For storage, there’s a total of 4 SATA ports and 1 x PCIE Gen5 M.2 slots as well as 4 x PCIE Gen4 M.2 slots, which is more than plenty for most users. These M.2 slots feature Gigabyte’s EZ latch click, which allows users to mount your M.2 SSDs with ease. It also comes with an impressive-looking M.2 Thermal Guard L and Thermal Guard Ext. with full cover heat shield.
The rear I/O panel includes 4 x USB 2.0 ports, 2 x antenna connectors (with WIFI EZ-Plug), 4 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 1 x Thunderbolt™ 4 connector (USB4® USB Type-C® port), 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports (red), 1 x 2.5GbE LAN port, 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector, Mic-in and Audio-out jacks.
