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 Olajuwon Achille

Most people don't need a $700 motherboard, and while $270 is a bit pricey, this board sits comfortably in the middle of the Aorus lineup just the right amount of premium features and qualities that more expensive boards have and still feel premium. There is almost no space on the rear I/O panel as you get 9 USB ports, 4 USB 2.0 ports and 5 USB 3.2 ports + 1 USB 3.2 Type-C port. This motherboard does a great job overclocking all cores 1.3v, 5.0ghz on my i7 10700k. 30-35°C idle and 60-67°C when gaming on my Dark Rock Pro 4 cooler. Unlike other motherboards in this price range, this board has 3 M.2 slots instead of 2, including one reserved for PCIe support 4.0 with 11th Gen Intel. That promise extends to two PCIe expansion slots. If Intel delivers on the promise of PCIe 4.0 with Gen 11, then this is a very good board to test the future of if you're at Intel. The Ultra model, a step up, has M.2 heat shields for each slot, while this one has two. If you need a shield for each slot I would recommend this model as it doesn't cost much more than this. Personally, I prefer the M.2 Pro AX's screens to be detached, as opposed to the Ultra, which has the bottom two attached to each other. Many Aorus boards promise a DDR4 5000MHz xmp profile, which is pretty impressive. With all the positive aspects, let me solve the problem I have. I should warn you that when using Western Digital SN750 nvme SSDs, you may encounter an issue where your PC will not boot if you install it in the bottom (M2M_SB) M.2 slot. This is my second Z490 Pro AX board and I've encountered the same issue on both boards where my Western Digital SN750 1TB and 500GB SSD models (one with a heatsink, the other without) only work with the middle one M2A_SB slot work and not be loaded. on another M2M_SB slot. I thought part of my motherboard died. This went on until I got into a lengthy skirmish with Gigabyte support, in which we exhausted almost every possible option except testing a different manufacturer's NVMe SSD. I tried an HP EX920 M.2 256GB SSD in the M2M_SB slot and surprisingly the slot worked properly. Now it works fine with my WD SN750 drives in both slots. You may not encounter this problem like I did, but if you do, you can learn from my experience and avoid this problem entirely by using my fix or by purchasing another brand of nvme SSD. It's your decision. If you're on a budget, the Gigabyte Vision G is a great alternative at a lower price. It includes many of the same features as this board, including the same performance phase, future PCIe 4.0 support, 3 M.2 slots, and an xmp profile with 5000MHz support. However, I don't recommend going any lower if you want to overclock 10700k or 10900k. The positive of Pro AX outweighs my rare negative as I have fully resolved the issue.