Review on 💪 Powerful and Feature-Packed GIGABYTE Z490 AORUS PRO AX Gaming Motherboard - Intel LGA1200, Z490, ATX, Dual M.2, SATA 6Gb/s, USB 3.2 Gen 2, Intel WiFi 6, 2.5G LAN by Jason Sergeantson

It's been a few weeks since I've finally been able to put my build together and so far it's been a good ride with a little nudge or two . At first the initial setup went pretty well, the RAM (16GB @ 3600) jumped in with no issues, the CPU (i7 10700k) went in fine, although the chip slipped out of my fingers a bit and I had to salvage it quickly; Luckily none of the pins were damaged so I breathed a HUGE relief when it was posted. The m.2 heatsinks are beefy and feel nice, and I didn't have any of the issues others have with m.2 slots. Note; The top open m.2 slot is down and reserved for running 11th Gen processors with 4th Gen m.2/PCIe support. So people should be happy that the board has a 4th generation upgrade path without having to replace fees. With everything posted and a BIOS update (Q-Flash came in handy) it was time to fix the only real issue I had with the board. Trying to set up both m.2 nvme (SN750) drives in RAID 0 is not an easy task at all and you'll have to look up how to do it (including firstly enabling RST on both drives in a separate menu of ez raid, then ez raid) and gigabytes you should try to simplify this process as nvme is becoming more and more popular these days. After this problem was fixed, everything else ran smoothly. The CPU was slightly overclocked and the PCH temperature rarely rose above 55°C even in hour-long benchmark tests and I was able to get a stable 5.0GHz i7 10700k @ 1.28V (planned to increase it to 5.1 , so I'll update this review as soon as those results come in). More information; In itself the RGB on the board is minimal but I'm not particularly concerned as I have a windowless r6 fractal, in the same vein I can't comment on the Gigabyte RGB software as I don't really care about pretty lights. The board has RGB stripe headers, so you have that option. Keep all of this in mind if RGB is important to you. The built in WiFi receiver was a godsend when setting up Windows as the ethernet plug doesn't work until you update your drivers (which you really can't do if Windows is installed first) so make sure you have a WiFi connection, otherwise you will run into some problems and you will have to download all the drivers on a separate computer/laptop and then install them on a new computer (if it is a new build of course). Using the m.2 -Top cover slot disables SATA 4 and 5 ports, but that's a chipset limitation if I'm not wrong (who needs more than 4 ports?). I'd comment if there are any issues with any of the PCIe x16 slots, but I'm also waiting for an RTX 30xx (or big Navi if the rumors are true) so I'll come back and update as soon as I can get the GPU. All in all, this is a great board if you're looking for a minimalist look coupled with a lot of features that make this Z490 board very competitive, especially under $300. Offer. I highly recommend it, especially if you don't like RGB.