Review: Aorus Z490 Xtreme

Conclusion

All the major motherboard manufacturers have an extreme board in their AMD X570 and Intel Z490 lineups. Going by that very name, the Aorus version costs £750 and competes against the Asus Maximus XII Extreme and MSI MEG Godlike.

Spending this kind of money ought to buy you the proverbial kitchen sink. Aorus' styling is absolutely top-notch, VRM capability is way beyond the cooling capabilities of anything other than LN2, RGB is restrained, and there are the usual goodies such as 10G LAN, Thunderbolt 3, PCIe 4.0 potential, and massive heatsinks that keep temperature very much in check.

Performance is suitably impressive at stock levels with a Core i9-10900K, and being able to scale memory close to 5GHz bodes well for those that want to hit the limits of what's possible on a mainstream Intel system. Cheaper boards offer this, too, so any hero offering needs to do more. Asus and MSI have funky OLED screens on theirs, while Aorus relies on aesthetics and an audio DAC.

Then there's the issue of why USB 3.2 Gen 2 2x2 is missing from this generation when we see it on £250 boards from the competition. And for those that have seen the X570 version, RGB Fan Commander isn't included this time around.

Overall, then, if you get beyond the beautiful aesthetics, Aorus has left a little too much on the table for the Z490 Xtreme to be outright recommended at its lofty £750 price point.

Z490 Aorus Xtreme

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The Z490 Aorus Xtreme motherboard is available to purchase from Scan Computers.

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