Gigabyte Z890 AORUS Elite DUO X Motherboard Review – CQDIMM-Ready!

Conclusion

Gigabyte's refreshed Z890 motherboard lineup features the company's brand new Ultra Turbo Mode, enabling faster performance by fine-tuning the system components. Gigabyte offers these 1-Click Turbo modes across its Intel Core Ultra 200S Plus & AMD Ryzen 9000 lineups.

This is an enhanced version of the 200S Boost mode by Intel, which the company launched with its previous 800-series offerings. This time, the solution is not only better, but Gigabyte has made it much more useful through BIOS and software-side revamps. In our tests, the CPU sees an average 10-15% uplift in app and around 5-8% improvement in games using the Core Ultra 9 285K CPU. That's a strong uplift & you get to see improvements on both fronts, which is great. Furthermore, the 19 Phase VRM with 16 60A phases from the CPU is solid enough, and DDR5-10466 memory support is just mindblowing.

The Gigabyte motherboard division is known for implementing forward-looking technologies on its boards before widespread adoption. As such, the Duo X gets CQDIMM support, which was announced for 200S Plus CPUs, but we haven't seen a whole lot of motherboards offering support for the standard. While Gigabyte knows that DDR5 memory prices are out of control, they still want enthusiasts to try out these DIMMs and their capabilities early on.

Five M.2 slots and three PCIe slots, both featuring a dedicated Gen5 option, are great. The EZ-Latch design on the PCIe slots and M.2 slots is DIY Friendly. WIFI7+BT5.4, along with 5GbE LAN, enables future-proof connectivity and wireless technologies, while the full list of USB (17 in total) options includes:

• CPU:
  - 1 x USB4 USB Type-C port on the back panel
  Chipset:
  - 1 x USB Type-C port with USB 3.2 Gen 2 support, available through the internal USB header
  - 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports (red) on the back panel
  - 5 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports (3 ports on the back panel, 2 ports available through the internal USB header)
  
• Chipset+2 USB 2.0 Hubs:
  - 8 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports (4 ports on the back panel, 4 ports available through the internal USB headers)

Our Pros/Cons of the Gigabyte Z890 AORUS Elite DUO X include:

• +Great Design
• +Great Performance
• +Best Memory Support (10466 MT/s)
• +Intel 200S Plus Support Out-of-the-box
• +17 USB Ports, including USB4
• +Five M.2 slots (all heatsink cooled)
• +Toolless M.2 Installation
• +WIFI 7 + BT5.4 + 2.5GbE LAN
• +Pre-Installed LAN Drivers
• - CQDIMM, while impressive, is out of reach due to stupendous prices
• -60A VRMs, though decent is a bit mainstream for a high-end price

The motherboard supports built-in RGB lighting and external RGB support through 3 ARGB & 1 RGB headers (all controllable through the RGB Fusion software). The motherboard itself has two RGB accent zones.

The 64 MB BIOS also ensures that users not only have enough firmware flash storage for future AGESA BIOS updates, but it also comes packed with built-in drivers for WIFI, which means that you don't have to worry about installing WIFI drivers to get internet working when building a new PC.

So based on our test, we found Gigabyte's Z890 AORUS DUO X motherboard a solid first look at the next-generation CQDIMM memory options while retaining absolutely fantastic features, which the ELITE series is known for. You can expect full performance out of Intel's 200S Plus CPUs running the board, and you will be backed with lots of overclocking headroom and an endless list of IO options.

You can find additional information about our hardware review process and ethics policy here.

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.