Review on GIGABYTE Z490 AORUS LGA1200 Motherboard Computer Components by Bob Maldonado

First things first. This motherboard is a premium motherboard. My son originally leaned towards the ROG Strix Z490 so we bought it. However, I convinced him to try Gigabyte and he did not disappoint. This was his first build and it ran flawlessly. So let's dive into the pros and cons. Pros: * Compatible with 10th and 11th generation Intel processors. * High quality materials including heatsink, connectors and I/O shield. * PCIe4 support. This will change the data transfer rate to higher speed drives once the 11th Gen Intel processors come out.* Simple and amazing biography with easy setup and advanced features for power users.* WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5 support .* Enough USB 2 and USB3 , plus a few M.2 slots for your cool SSDs. Cons: * No built-in Thunderbolt. However, this board is Thunderbolt-capable with the included Thunderbolt connector on the board. You just need to purchase an additional fee if you wish. * Documentation could be improved a bit. It was a little confusing which 8-pin header we wanted the CPU to turn on until we watched a YouTube video that specifically said to use the left one unless we had weird ones cooling requirements. I believe adding a detail like this might help. Also, Bluetooth became buggy after the initial installation. Strange videos on the internet suggested miraculous solutions by simply unplugging the power and restarting the computer, but that wasn't the cause. A NOTICE. For users who don't have Bluetooth, take out the antennas that came with the Aorus and connect them to the motherboard. This will solve your problems. For a gigabyte, it may help if the documents have that information somewhere. The last build we did featured a great 1TB NVMe M.2 SK Hynix Gold SSD. Read and write speeds were excellent. Windows installed in 4 minutes. All systems are running. Loading takes about 10 seconds. This does not happen from the sleep mode, but from the switched off state. I hope you have the same experience with your build! This board works with Windows 10!