Review on 💻 GIGABYTE Z390 AORUS PRO Wi-Fi Motherboard - Intel LGA1151, Z390, ATX, 2xM.2 Thermal Guard, AC Wi-Fi, RGB Fusion by Shawn Parker

Background: I have been in IT for 24 years; My early years were in a small shop making personal computers in the 90's. I'm upgrading about every five years at this point and for the first time in a long while the competition in the market has resulted in worthwhile improvements so I went shopping to upgrade my Core i7-4790K system and settled on an Intel i9 9900K because I found a bargain. I've used motherboards from most major manufacturers (Gigabyte, MSI, ASUS, Asrock); I've looked through all the major brands looking for a solid Z390 board with quality construction, particularly in terms of voltage regulation, but with a few features that I like. Revain currently has this board at the most competitive price of any vendor and after shopping I found that the Z390 Aorus Pro WiFi also has all the features I need and many competitors in the same range don't have or need more. : Thick, strong circuit board that does not warp or bend too easily. High quality voltage regulation typical of Aorus Elite, Pro, Pro WiFi and Ultra boards (all have the same setting). Note that ASUS, for example, doesn't have such good voltage regulation until you stumble across their top-end boards, and charge significantly more for their ROG STRIX Z390-E. MSI has the same quality, but their MPG Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon AC Board (let's say three times faster) is also a step up in price. Built-in Realtek ALCS1220 audio codec, separated from the electrical components on the PCB to eliminate crosstalk, using high quality capacitors. Sounds good on a Logitech 5.1 speaker system, I didn't have any crackling, cracking or other defects. - Two M.2 NVME SSD slots, both with heatsinks (note: using these will eliminate some SATA ports; read the specs and know in advance, this is how the Z390 chipset will work for any manufacturer, it there are only a certain number of PCIe lanes) - Built-in Wi-Fi Intel AC, which I tested with a Ubiquiti AC hotspot (it works very well, although I usually use a wired connection) and an Intel gigabit network card . Two metal reinforced PCIe slots (perfect for my SLI configuration) and metal reinforced DIMM slots to prevent slot cracking and board warping. sensor wires) optionally allow you to monitor the temperature of areas in your system - Many all necessary connectors, USB2, USB3.1 and USB3.1C to meet your needs - Gigabyte DualBIOS to protect against accidental BIOS corruption - A built-in back panel; You'll never lose it, a small thing but a welcome CON: -BIOS. It's honestly not the worst in the world, but Gigabyte's BIOS is unintuitive compared to ASUS (the market leader) and has many items hidden in submenus and not always well defined. Once you've got your board set up the way you want it's not a problem, but if you're a customizer you'll need to do a lot of research to determine some of the settings or even find out where they are. My conclusion is therefore one star. Also, make sure you have the latest version (F9 at the moment) - I'd really like to see three additional features on this board; Debug LED, Displayport connection in addition to HDMI and Power/Reset CMOS buttons on the back. Admittedly this increases the price and no one has debug/LED or power/CMOS buttons at this price point (some have displayport). I don't throw anything away for that, I just want it. I've been working with this board for a month now; For almost three of those weeks I've been running Folding@Home on my i9-9900K when I'm not gaming, which uses 100% of my two Geforce GTX 1070 cards and 100% of all eight CPU cores with a maximum turbo speed of 4.8GHz. My system has been consistently stable (using a Seasonic Platinum I 1000W PSU) with no crashes or issues. All of my games either ran at least 10 fps faster (much more) or allowed me to set higher detail settings than my 4790K system (with the same graphics cards) at 1900x1200. I would have no hesitation in recommending this board as the best model you will find for under $200 and above that price you are basically buying junk or features intended for liquid cooled folks. Reliable purchase. UPDATE 07/11/2019. I replaced my storage by switching from two Samsung 850 Pro 512GB (2.5″) and one WD Black 1TB SSD to one of the storage SSDs and adding two HP EX920 1TB M.2 NVMe SSDs. x4 SSD. They work great and are very fast. The first SSD doesn't take away any SATA ports (as long as you use NVMe), the second takes away two ports (4 and 5). With these two drives I still have enough space for a SATA SSD, DVD burner and SATA docking station built into my case with a free port.