Intro
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Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO WIFI motherboard preview
OCWorkbench 8 Oct 2018
2018 is an exciting year with AMD and both Intel deliverying newer products to match in performance and price.
In October 2018, Intel is slated to launch it’s new Z390 chipset and 9th generation of processors. In this preview, we will take a quick look at the motherboard and see what if offers.
The Gigabyte Z390 AORUS PRO WIFI motheroard is based on the Intel Z390 Express chipset. So, what is the difference between this and the older Z370. Basically, the Z390 is the Z370 plus a Intel CNVI interface supporting 802.11a/b/g/n/ac at 2.4/5 GHz. It also supports 802.11ac at 160 MHz up to 1.73 Gbps data rate. Secondly, it supports up to 6x USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports in addition to the 10x USB 3.1 Gen ports currently supported by the Z370 chipset.
The mainboard has 4 DIMM slots supporting up to 64 GB of system memory in dual channel memory architecture of up to DDR4-2666 (overclocking can go beyond spec. speed). The audio component use the Realtek ALC 1220-VB codec for HD Audio. Intel GbE LAN is supported on board.
Wireless communication module is something new in the Z390 board. Instead of using a separate WIFI chip, it is now integrated within the chipset. It supports Bluetooth 5, 802.11a/b/g/n/ac at 2.4/5 GHz and 802.11ac at 160 MHz up to 1.73 Gbps data rate.
The board comes with 3 PCIe full length slots which supports NVIDIA Quad GPU SLI and 2 way NVIDIA SLI. It also supports AMD Quad GPU CrossFire and 3/2 way AMD crossFire.
In terms of storage (via chipset), it supports 2 x M.2 Slot. One supports Intel Hybrid SSD support (M2M) while the other doesn’t (M2A) . There are also 6 SATA 6Gbps ports that supports RAID 0,1,5 and 10. The board also supports Intel Optane memory.
As for USB (via chipset), there is a 1 USB Type C port with USB 3.1 Gen 2 on the back panel and another Gen 1 through the on board USB connector. There are 2 USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type A ports (red) at the back panel and 5 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports (3 ports on back panel, 2 ports through USB header). Through the USB 2.0 hub, there are 8 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports on board , 4 at the back panel and another 4 through USB headers.
