Stefan Mileschin

Back in December, GIGABYTE announced its highly premium Z390 Aorus Extreme WaterForce motherboard with an E-ATX form factor, a 10 gigabit NIC and 16-phase power delivery. The biggest feature is a built-in all-in-one monoblock for liquid cooling that comes with the motherboard. If that wasn't eye-watering enough, it has now been listed at Newegg with a price tag of $900.

Buy GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Xtreme WaterForce on Newegg

The GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Xtreme WaterForce has a similar feature-set to the Z390 Aorus Xtreme model with one major difference; the all-in-one integrated monoblock which stretches from the rear panel cover all the way across to the Z390 chipset heatsink. Underneath the RGB monoblock is an LGA 1151 socket and an overkill 16-phase IR Digital power delivery which uses PowIRstages. This power delivery is controlled by an IR35201 running at 8+0 which means each phase is using a doubler. Overclocking is a big focus for this model with a total of two 8-pin 12 V ATX power inputs designed to allow the CPU to pull as much power as it needs.

Other distinguished features of the GIGABYTE Z390 Aorus Xtreme WaterForce include dual network controllers with an Aquantia 10GBase-T and Intel networking, paired with a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec which is complemented by an ESS Sabre 9018K2M DAC and OPA1622 OP-AMP. Making up the storage capability is three M.2 slots and six SATA ports which allow for RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays to be used. Located around the PCB cover is three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which run at x16/x8, x8/x8/x4; the bottom slot operates at PCIe 3.0 x2 if a PCIe SSD is installed into the M2P M.2 slot. An additional two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots are located between the full-length slots.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13887...ce-motherboard