1, top power supply materials
In fact, in addition to the changes in the chipset, the Z490 motherboard compared with the Z390 motherboard has an obvious improvement, that is, the power supply is fully enhanced. Ten generations of core in the architecture and process unchanged to a maximum of 10 core 20 threads, the frequency can also reach 5.3GHz, the number of cores and frequencies have reached a new high Intel consumer platform, power consumption is naturally rising. At this time, even if the interface is unchanged, the old Z390 with i5, i7 may be OK, with i9 can not withstand, so the new generation of Z490 motherboard, especially the flagship Z490 motherboard in the power supply pile is very crazy.
The Gigabyte Z490AORUSXTREME eagle uses 16 phase power supply, which is already very luxurious from the point of view of the number of phases.
What's more, each phase of the motherboard is powered by Intersild's ISL99390B DrMOS, which was previously only used in the TRX40 HEDT-level platform power supply scheme, the maximum carrying current per phase is 90A, much higher than the general 45A, 75A, and the limit carrying current reaches a terrible 1440A! Such data ensures that the motherboard can overclock i9-10900K to the limit.
The PWM controller uses the ISL69269 from Renesas, a server-level chip that supports three power outputs.
In order to obtain a more pure and stable power supply current, Gigabyte also uses a large number of tantalum capacitors. Tantalum capacitors have a longer life than ordinary capacitors, more high temperature resistance, higher accuracy, and better high-frequency wave modification performance. According to the official of Gigabyte, the voltage peak can be reduced by 22% after the use of tantalum capacitors, and the current is more stable.
2, top cooling system
In addition to higher requirements for the power supply element, the greater power consumption of the CPU will also put higher requirements on the heat dissipation of the CPU power supply. If the temperature of the power supply area increases, the resistance will become larger, and the larger resistance will affect the stability of the current, so it is very important to ensure the low temperature of the power supply area on the ten-generation core platform with very high power supply requirements.
On this motherboard, Giojia uses new heat dissipation technologies such as the second generation stack fin design (Fins array Ⅱ) and the second generation Direct Touch Heatpipe design (Direct Touch Heatpipe Ⅱ). Perhaps everyone is still fresh in the memory of the dense heat fin on the Giojia Z390 AORUS MASTER, this second generation of stacked heat fin design makes the heat dissipation module equipped with a large number of heat fins, compared with the previous generation technology also adds three heat dissipation holes on each heat fin to further improve the heat transfer efficiency.
The second generation of direct contact heat pipe design upgrades the first generation of 6mm heat pipe to 8mm heat pipe, and the heat dissipation efficiency is increased by 33%.
In addition, the back of the motherboard is also covered with a backplane, a large area of the backplane and PCB contact can assist the entire PCB heat dissipation. The official also said that the back of the motherboard and the cooling module are coated with nano carbon coating, which will be more efficient.
3, top expansion performance: PCIe 4.0 hardware design
Although the 10th generation Core does not support PCIe 4.0, but the 11th generation Core may support it? Gigabyte Z490 AORUS XTREME is also fully prepared for this, using PCIe 4.0 standard 8-layer PCB, PCIe X 16 slot near the CPU slot and M.2 interface can be switched to PCIe 4.0 mode (provided that the CPU supports). As soon as Intel gives the go-ahead to release cpus that support PCIe 4.0, the platform can become compatible with faster and more powerful PCIe 4.0 SSDS and graphics cards.
However, when it is now equipped with the tenth generation Core, the motherboard BIOS does not adjust to PCIe 4.0 option, I hope that the eleventh generation core can have PCIe 4.0, and there is no need to change the motherboard.
In addition, there are two Thunderbolt3 interfaces on the back of the motherboard, which is the famous, commonly known as the Thunderbolt3 interface, the bandwidth reaches 40Gbps, which is 2 to 8 times the general USB interface, and supports 8K video output or external NVMe SSD, which is a future-facing super interface.
In terms of network, this generation of high-end Z490 motherboards have all eliminated gigabit network cards, replaced with a new Intel2.5G network card bandwidth doubled by 2.5 times, Z490 AORUS XTREME also installed AQUANTIA's AQN-107 10GB network card, wireless network cards have also been upgraded to Wi-Fi6, In terms of network support is already top.
It says how strong the power supply of the motherboard is, and how powerful the heat dissipation design is, but this is only on paper after all, we will test a wave of overclocking and baking machine below to see how the motherboard is.
3 Measurement and summary
The new Gigabyte BIOS interface looks very comfortable, and common functions can be easily found, which is a great improvement over the past.
Finally, it was found that the CPU in most cases can pass a variety of run score tests and game tests at 5.3GHz, only slightly reduced frequency when running R15 and R20, ten core core 5.3GHz, a very terrible number, then how much will the CPU improve after overclocking?
The motherboard can overclock the i9-10900K at 5.3GHz, and the CPU performance after overclocking has been improved by about 3.6%, further squeezing the performance of the flagship ten generations of Core.