Together with the announcement of Alder Lake from Intel, motherboard companies introduced tons of fresh Z690 based products. Taking advantage of the latest 12th generation Intel Alder Lake CPU, these Z690 motherboards take your gaming to the next level.
Sporting the latest PCIe 5.0 and DDR 5 technology, Z690 offers increased speeds, more efficiency and higher FPS in games. But what exactly is Z690 and how can you upgrade your gaming rig to the latest and greatest?
AORUS offers everything you need to get up and running quickly and easily to let’s take a look and see what is on offer.
What is Z690 and Alder Lake?
Intel has released their latest product offering with the new 12th generation Intel processors which replace the previous 11th generation Rocket Lake CPUs.
These new 10nm processors provide x86 scalable dynamic architecture which makes use of two new microarchitectures on one single die thanks to their new hybrid architecture.
The new Alder Lake CPUs provide two processing cores, a Performance x86 core and an Efficient x86 core.
The Performance x86 Core gives you all of the processing power you need in order to handle workload acceleration that has a large code footprint and larger data sets. It’s included AI acceleration technology for matrix multiplication and new smart PM controller keep things lightning fast and manages power with ease.
The Efficient x86 Core handles the background tasks that are running and provides additional power to applications that benefit from making use of additional cores. This Core is built with throughput in mind that gives users scalable multi-threaded performance.
With the creation of the new Alder Lake processors, this also means a re-designed socker in the form of LGA 1700, which is where Z690 motherboards come in. Z690 motherboards are designed to handle this new socket design and also provide you with the other features that are available with this new generation of PC computing.
Aside from a more efficient and powerful CPU, gamers are also being treated to the release of DDR5 Memory and PCIe 5.0.
DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 offer increased speed, throughput and performance over their predecessors DDR4 and PCIe 4.0. This means that games will be able to take advantage of newly released DDR5 RAM and upcoming PCIe 5.0 products such as storage and GPUs.
Now, if you want to have the latest and greatest in gaming and take advantage of the benefits of Alder Lake and Z690, you are going to have to upgrade your current gaming rig. So let’s take a look and see what’s available.
Z690 AORUS MASTER Motherboard
The Z690 AORUS Master looks excellent visually and internally. Additionally, it even appears like the company has integrated a lot of great specifications and features on this product.
With its features, it appears to be the best bang-for-buck high-end motherboard available on the market. It supports up to five M.2 sockets and above DDR5 6,000 DRAM OC frequencies. Plus, it even packs a good 19-phase vCore power delivery system which makes it even better.
The Z690 AORUS MASTER is a board that doesn’t lack in features, and is one of the best choices for anyone serious about gaming. It sports a ton of USB ports and M.2 slots as well as incredible power management.
This Z690 board from GIGABYTE provides fast data transfer rates with their latest generation storage, network, and WiFi connections.
AORUS offers a platform that’s tested and proven to support DDR5 RAM with up to 6,400MHz profiles and beyond.
There are four DDR5 DIMMs present and these sport the Ultra-durable DDR5 Armour. They offer up to 6,400 MHz of dual-channel memory with support from the newest profiles.
AORUS DDR5 Memory
Moving forward, it’s also good to know that GIGABYTE is up and ready with their very-first AORUS DDR5 memory kits. This DDR5 memory offers enhanced stability combined with optimised memory performance.
Since there’s XMP 3.0 present, it will allow you to enable those advertised frequencies using the Z690 chipset board. And what’s good about it is that it can be done with ease.
The AORUS DDR5 memory offers extremely fast speeds that you should take advantage of in order to get the most gaming performance that you can out of your gaming PC.
The memory also makes use of a copper-aluminium composite heat spreader. This is great at handling heat dissipation to ensure zero overclocking compromises.
Supporting the Latest Specs of XMP 3.0
Memory modules from AORUS support the newest XMP 3.0 specifications. That means, you can conveniently fine-tune your XMP profile based on what you want. Not only that, but it also enhances your overclocking profiles and capabilities which is something extremely notable.
Aside from defining your XMP and applying pre-tuned XMP profiles, you can conveniently save the profiles in the SPD ROM. To put it simply, you can readily take advantage of the benefits from XMP 3.0 via the DDR5 memory module.
AORUS 12th Gen Intel Cooler
With the increased power and performance of the new 12th Generation Intel CPUs, that also means that things can run a little hotter.
Luckily, the AORUS 12th generation coolers like the AORUS WATERFORCE and AORUS WATERFORCE X AIO liquid coolers provide great CPU cooling, ensuring that temps stay where they should.
These coolers will provide you with superior cooling performance and heat depletion ensuring that the processor functions smoothly and adequately under extensive loads without any throttling.
There are three radiator sizes for the AORUS WATERFORCE and AORUS WATERFORCE X coolers. These are 240, 280, and 360mm which helps users with their requirements and preferences.