Overclocking and Conclusion

Overclocking

To get a feel for the overclocking potential of the Z390 AORUS Pro motherboard, we attempted to push it to known CPU-supported performance parameters with minimal tweaking. At the stock base clock speed of 100Mhz, we were able to get the system stable at a 5.0GHz CPU speed across all cores, a 4.7GHz Uncore frequency, and 3900MHz memory speed. This was done with a 1.275V CPU Vcore voltage, a 1.20V CPU System Agent voltage, a 1.05V CPU VCCIO voltage, a +150mV Ring PLL Overvoltage voltage, and a 1.35V memory voltage with all other values left at default settings. All overclocking sessions remained stable for over 4hrs. System stability was tested running the AIDA64 stability test in conjunction with EVGA's OC Scanner X graphical benchmark running at 1280×1024 resolution and 8x MSAA in stress test mode. Note that 8GB (2 x 4GB) of Corsair Dominator Platinum DDR4-4000 memory modules were used for the overclocking tests.

100MHz Base Clock Stats with 5.0GHZ CPU and 3900MHz memory speed

Note that this is is meant only as a quick preview of the board's performance potential. With more time to tweak the settings to a greater extent, pushing to a higher base clock and ring bus speed may have been achievable, in addition to an overnight stability run without issue.

Pricing

As of November 28th, the GIGABYTE Z390 AORUS Pro motherboard was available from Amazon.com for $214.91 with Free shipping. The board was also available from Newegg.com for $180.77.

Conclusion

The Z390 AORUS Pro motherboard is another fine product in GIGABYTE's AORUS motherboard line. It incorporates the newer styling that GIGABYTE is using to differentiate its board lines from one another, while integrating many of the features from past revisions of the Intel boards. Its elegant black and chrome aesthetic will find an easy home with almost any build and its RGB capabilities give it even more flexibility from an aesthetic perspective. Overall, it performed well with no real physical shortcomings in the board itself. The only real flaw was the lack of RGB LED configuration support integrated into the UEFI.

Strengths

  • Stock performance
  • Overclocking potential
  • Board aesthetics, layout, and design
  • UEFI BIOS design and usability
  • Variety of storage solution support including SATA and M.2
  • Intel I219-V GigE network controller
  • PCIe x1 slot 1 usable with dual slot video card seated in primary PCIe x16 slot
  • CMOS battery placement

Weaknesses

  • No UEFI-based RGB LED configuration support

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