Final Thoughts and Conclusion
Although I may be partial to Gigabyte motherboards, I can be critical when a product has any issues, minor or major. Fortunately, thats not the case with the Z390 Aorus Pro. Since the inception of Aorus branded motherboard, I’ve had little to no issues. Each generation that passes, Gigabyte finds a way to make their boards better. When I reviewed the Z370 Gaming 7, I couldn’t think of what they could do to improve on an already solid line up. Yet, here we are. I can honestly say Gigabyte did a great job on the Z390 Aorus Pro. It has a simple and attractive design. Little things such as using more neutral colors and removing the accent lighting strip changed the entire aesthetic of their motherboards. There are no real flashy, in your face colors like red, orange. Just blacks, grays and a bit of white. this almost guarantees that this board will fit well into really any build. Very often, the term “less is more” can be applied to many things in life. Especially when it comes to the RGB lighting. One of the many things Gigabyte does well with their motherboards is the RGB lighting. I’ve said it a million times by now. When RGB lighting is done right, it can work really well and it most certainly works on this board.
This being a sub 200 dollar motherboard, I was weary on how it may perform. As a rule of thumb, I usually spend around the same on a motherboard that I do on a processor. So for a 500ish dollar processor like the I9 9900k, I’d usually go with something like the Z390 Aorus Xtreme. So you can imagine my surprise with the performance I got from the combination of the Z390 Aorus Pro and the I9 9900k. A huge part of this was Gigabyte decision to use all the same high-quality components across their entire Z390 Aorus line-up. This mean the high-end mosfets, chokes and capacitors that are on the Aorus Xtreme and Master, are the same components on the Pro and the Elite, the more budget oriented motherboard in the Z390 Aorus Line up. They simply just strip the less expensive boards of a couple features here and there to keep costs down. Their though is keeping the same components will allow any board in the Aorus line up to clock your processor to 5.0 GHz on all core. I can’t speak for other boards, but I can say that the 9900k tested in this review hit 5.1 GHz on all cores, stable. The most impressive part is this was done on a motherboard that, at the time of this review is selling for $199.99 on Amazon. I’ve seen it as cheap as $179.99 on other online retailers and also at Microcenter. The price to performance ratio for the Z390 Aorus Pro from Gigabyte makes this board a must have for anyone trying to build the best Intel PC that won’t break the bank for the 2018 holiday season.
