Aorus Xtreme Waterforce Motherboard Review

Test System and Testing Procedures

Motherboard reviews are usually the most in depth reviews we do as they incorporate a little of everything. Especially when you’re working with a flagship motherboard as packed with features as the Z390 Aorus Xtreme Waterforce. As with any review, we do our best to keep things as even as possible from review to review. Ambient temperature is kept as close to 20°c (68°f) as possible. When the system was first turned on, it sat idles for about 20 minutes or so before any benchmarks were run or results recorded. We waited in between each benchmark no less than 20 minutes to give the system time to cool down a bit.

We test everything from CPU and memory performance to gaming, audio, and networking. All benchmarks were run with both the CPU and GPU at their stock speeds. The I9 9900k we used, on average, boosted to 4.7 GHz. The test results from the Z390 Aorus Xtreme were compared to the results from the Z390 Aorus Pro. Both boards were tested with the same i9 9900k. Both had G. Skill Trident Z memory running at 3200 MHz and used the same power supply. Both systems used open air cases. The standard test bench is on the Praxis Wetbench from Primochill and the Z390 Aorus Xtreme Waterforce was installed on the Thermaltake Core P5. Each benchmark was run three times and we went with the best overall results.