Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Ultra

The Gigabyte Z490 Aorus Ultra is a premium motherboard and the performance lives up to that reputation. I’ve been pleased with Gigabyte boards in the past (and still use one on my Ryzen machine every day), so was happy to find that trend continuing here. The absence of ESS audio and too many USB 2.0 ports aside, I found it to be a very forward looking board, which is exactly as it should be when you’re spending $299 on a new motherboard.

Gigabyte’s Z490 AORUS Ultra sort of sits in the middle of their AORUS Z490 motherboard line. With that you have a very solid feature-set. You are going to be what you expect from the Z490 chipset as far as 2.5GbE LAN, USB 3.2 gen 2, M.2 support, etc. Gigabyte has added some very nice features to this board as well, the first is 802.11ax WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0. You are also getting three M.2 slots, all of which have thermal guards.