Gigabyte Z490M GAMING X
 | $268.21 Buy!  GIGABYTE Z490M GAMING X LGA 1200 Intel Z490 Micro-ATX Motherboard with M.2Newegg.comDelivery: in USA Report |
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Compact, well-equipped and reliable microATX gaming motherboard based on the top 2020 Intel Z490 chipset. The manufacturer is positioning itself as a model of the middle price category, focused on creating performant gaming and overclocking systems based on processors with an LGA 1200 socket. It will perfectly cope with the role of the basis of an entry-level / mid-level workstation.
Guaranteed compatible with 2/4/6/8/10-core 10th Gen Intel Core i9/i7/i5/i3, Pentium and Celeron processors with Comet Lake microarchitecture (14nm). The Gigabyte Z490M GAMING X motherboard fully complies with the Gigabyte Ultra Durable proprietary concept, which provides for the use of an improved printed circuit board and an increased reliability element base. Supports overclocking K-series CPU and RAM.
A powerful 12-phase power subsystem is able to ensure stable operation of the system with a significant increase in processor clock frequencies, which is performed with a noticeable increase in voltages. It is possible to install four DDR4 DIMM modules with a total capacity of up to 128 GB and an effective frequency of up to 4500 MHz. Equipped with one M.2 port with an aluminium heatsink to dissipate heat from a fast NVMe SSD. Fast processing of network traffic with minimal latency is provided by the GbE adapter from Intel. There are 2 USB 3.2 Gen2 ports for connecting high-speed peripherals.
Motherboard for low-cost gamers
Gigabyte has recently taken the gaming market seriously, releasing a whole bunch of interesting Aorus gaming monitors, and then showing the world the first SSD on the PCI-E 4.0 4x bus. The changes also affected the motherboards beloved by the company, where quite expensive and sophisticated motherboards of the Aorus series also poured. Unlike them, the hero of this review, the Z 490 GAMING X, is destined for the role not of a star of test benches, but of a hard worker who carries a piano and is ready to pull a rather powerful gaming assembly on his shoulders.
Only what is really necessary
This is never a fashion board that shines like a New Year tree in the centre of the capital. There is work with illumination here, but it is moderately modest. The design is not too flashy. The list of features is unlikely to cause excitement. But all this is not necessary, the quality and stability are more important, with which the Z 490 GAMING X has no problems. As with functionality: the board boasts a rather serious 12-phase power subsystem with doublers (10+2 scheme), mosfet heatsinks, two PCI-E 3.0x16 slots for connecting a bundle of two video cards. There is only one M.2 slot for fashionable solid state drives, but there are six SATA slots, so in the future it will be possible to make a bunch of a regular SATA SSD and a fast NVMe. Plus, the Realtek ALC1200 audio chip has proven itself as an alternative to external sound cards for gamers.
Circuitry in the tradition of Aorus
Considering that the board can now be found for a rather modest $200 by the standards of overclocker boards, such a set looks impressive. But even more interesting is that the circuitry of the Z 490 GAMING X has a lot in common with the more expensive Aorus boards, in which the heatsinks of the VRM node are connected by a heat pipe, there is a huge heatsink on the hub, and the M.2 slots are equipped with cooling heatsinks. In terms of a solid foundation, this is much more important than the conditional support for PCI-E 4.0, which is of little use right now.
