GIGABYTE Z390 AORUS Ultra - can it do lots of IO?

[sharknice]

I'm considering getting a GIGABYTE Z390 AORUS Ultra and 9900k and wondering if anyone can tell me if I can do everything I want with this board.

I plan to overclock and it's VRM makes it very good for that which is why it's my first choice. I mainly want gaming performance but I also do a lot of software development and need to run a lot of monitors.


I run 7 monitors and since the onboard only has a single HDMI connection instead of 3 connections I'll need to connect two discrete graphics cards. In this case it would be a 1080ti and a 770. I want to make sure that doesn't somehow limit the speed of my 1080ti. And I eventually plan on upgrading the 1080ti to something faster once new cards are released.

I also plan on using 2 M.2 SSDs and at 2 SATA drives, and I will probably add more storage in the future. I heard some motherboards disable SATA slots when you use M.2 slots. Will I at least be able to use 2 M.2s and 2 SATAs simultaneously?

Will this motherboard be able to handle all of that at once? If it can't is there another 9900k board that can or am I just hitting the limits of the CPU?

I also plan on using a Noctua NH-D15 as the cooler. Would that fit on this board without restricting my RAM slots etc? If it did I would just get an AIO or something instead, but it would be nice to know.

 

[Keljian]

I can answer those questions, I have one of those boards:

1. The D15 is a good fit for the board. Almost as if it was set up for it in the first place.
2. You will be able to use 2 M.2. SSDs and 2 sata (I am using 3 sata and 2 M2 SSDs on mine)
3. When running 2 cards, if you were to pop one (the 770) in the bottom slot, you could have 4x for that slot, and 16x for the 1080ti which would mean the 1080ti would not be limited. The 770 would be limited to 4x unless you use the M2P slot (the lowest nvme/m2 slot) in which case it would operate at 2x.

If you use the middle slot for the 770, you would limit the 1080ti to 8x rather than the default 16x.

Bear in mind if you need to use the bottom slot, you should plug all your plugs into the motherboard first before putting the card in (cause you'll have trouble otherwise)

 

[sharknice]

The Noctua is such great HSF, but the damn thing is so FUGLY.........so, so, so FUGLY.
Get the be quiet's BBC (big black cooler) Dark Pro 4 for the same price and same performance. I'm getting that for my 9900KF.
And yes, the Noctua should fit in fine in that motherboard, I used it in a Z390 PRO WI-FI.

Don't forget to get a beefy PSU with two EPS connectors to give the 9900 enough juice.

Yeah I think I'm going to go with the Dark Pro 4 instead. I'm going with a EVGA Supernova 1600 G2 PSU, it has 2 EPS connectors.

For memory I was thinking two of these 2x8GB kits for a total of 32GB
HyperX Predator DDR4 RGB 16GB kit 4000MHz CL17 DIMM XMP RAM Memory/Infrared Sync Technology Black (HX440C19PB3AK2/16)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GMZKNK6/?coliid=I9XAM0OG6SN1X&colid=K6CIZJ8OEHSI&psc=1

Do you know if the motherboard will be able to run 4 sticks of it at 4000MHz?

 

[Keljian]

You don’t need two EPS connections.

And unless you are running SLi, you don’t need 1600w, heck even then (200w cpu, 250w per card, 30w in change)

At 4.8 full out with AVX, the 9900k consumes about 148W, if you overclock the snot out of it, it’ll be up about 200W


A 750 or 850w power supply will be sufficient as you won’t be running all of that at peak the whole time

 

[sharknice]

I think I might go with the 1300w just to have a little headroom then, pricepicker was saying my consumption would be 850w but that doesn't factor in OCing of the 9900k and 1080ti, and I may add a few more storage drives.

 

[Keljian]

I have a mildly overclocked 9900k, on the aorus Ultra, with 64 gig of ram, 3 drives, and two NVME drives and a factory overclocked zotac 1080ti amp edition. No partridge in a pear tree though

My peak consumption is about 500w in general use, typical use is much lower as measured by my UPS (you have one of those right?). You do not need a 1300w PSU.

 

[Armenius]

I have a similar system with the 9900K overclocked to 5 GHz on all cores (see sig) and I run it on 750W. There is still plenty of headroom left. I'd probably go with 850W with the GTX 770 just to give a little more buffer.

Yeah I think I'm going to go with the Dark Pro 4 instead. I'm going with a EVGA Supernova 1600 G2 PSU, it has 2 EPS connectors.

For memory I was thinking two of these 2x8GB kits for a total of 32GB
HyperX Predator DDR4 RGB 16GB kit 4000MHz CL17 DIMM XMP RAM Memory/Infrared Sync Technology Black (HX440C19PB3AK2/16)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GMZKNK6/?coliid=I9XAM0OG6SN1X&colid=K6CIZJ8OEHSI&psc=1

Do you know if the motherboard will be able to run 4 sticks of it at 4000MHz?

According to the Gigabyte QVL it supports the CL19 model in all 4 slots.
https://d2aw00qtgn0pb6.cloudfront.net/FileList/Memory/mb_memory_z390-aours-ulrtra_20190214.pdf

I run this kit on an AORUS PRO WIFI and it has no issue running all 4 modules at 4000 MT/s. You can see it listed in the QVL above for the ULTRA model.
http://www.gskill.com/product/165/1...ZDDR4-4000MHz-CL18-19-19-39-1.35V32GB-(4x8GB)

 

[sharknice]

Thanks. I actually built this last week. Microcenter goofed my order and didn't have any Ultras left so they gave me a Master for $215.

I have my 9900k running at 5ghz and the memory going at 4000mhz. I think I may have won the silicon lottery because all I had to do for 5ghz is change the steps to 50 and it's running like 60c while gaming. I think I can push it a lot further but haven't tried yet. I've always had great luck with cpus from Microcenter.

I'm using a 1300 watt psu, I will try to remember to check the consumption tonight, but yeah I'm sure it's overkill.

Seems like it's using around 500 watts while gaming

 

[Keljian]

Thanks. I actually built this last week. Microcenter goofed my order and didn't have any Ultras left so they gave me a Master for $215.

How did you go with the build?

 

[Armenius]

Thanks. I actually built this last week. Microcenter goofed my order and didn't have any Ultras left so they gave me a Master for $215.

I have my 9900k running at 5ghz and the memory going at 4000mhz. I think I may have won the silicon lottery because all I had to do for 5ghz is change the steps to 50 and it's running like 60c while gaming. I think I can push it a lot further but haven't tried yet. I've always had great luck with cpus from Microcenter.

I'm using a 1300 watt psu, I will try to remember to check the consumption tonight, but yeah I'm sure it's overkill.

Seems like it's using around 500 watts while gaming

Ah, wasn't paying attention to the post's date when I replied. Glad to see I coerced an update, though . Good to hear it's a successful build.

 

[sharknice]

How did you go with the build?

new stuff:
Dark Base Pro 900 rev 2 case
9900k cpu
Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU Cooler
Gigabyte Aorus Master mobo
KINGSTON 16GB 2X8 D4 4000 C17 RGB - 2 of them for a total of 32GB
EVGA Supernova 1300 G2 psu
1TB 970 evo plus for OS
1TB 970 evo for games
8TB Seagate BarraCuda HDD for files

existing stuff:
1080ti with EVGA hybrid AIO cooler kit applied - gaming gpu
GTX 650 for additional monitors
4TB Seagate BarraCuda HDD


It's all working great.
The only thing kind of annoying was the case. You have to disassemble a lot of stuff just to make some small adjustments and finding some of the screws you need to unscrew was a pain. The manual was useless, I had to watch youtube videos for some of the stuff.
I can't use the PSU shroud because I have a graphics card in the bottom slot of my motherboard and the shroud won't give it any breathing room there.
The PSU doesn't sit at the very back of the case, it sits a few inches in and has a weird extension cable that actually caused me problems. I couldn't get my PSU to power on at all while using that until I connected it to the PSU tester. Then I switched from the tester back to the mobo and it worked fine.
Despite the hassle I really like the end result of the case. It looks really nice, it's extremely sturdy, fairly quiet, and it was easy to manage all the wires.

The RGB on the motherboard, memory, and case all sync up with the software. I put the rgb strips that came with the case on the bottom for under-glow. They actually look pretty nice but I keep them all off.

Performance is great. The CPU peaks around 60c while gaming at 5GHz and it's basically at ambient temperature while idle. I upgraded from a 4770k and the framerate improvement in games is very noticeable. I would get occasional slowdowns in the games I play and that doesn't happen anymore.
Also load times are much, much faster. Before I was using Samsung 840 Pro SSDs for games and it would sometimes take a minute to load into a map on Mordhau and sometimes the first point would already be captured by the time I loaded in. Now it takes like 3 seconds to load and I'm the first one in every time.
Not that it was slow before, but Windows also loads faster. I typically don't even see the loading screen, it goes straight to the login screen.

The only thing I plan on changing is the GPU. Once HDMI 2.1 cards come out I'll swap out the 1080ti.

 

[Frraksurred]

Gigabyte Aorus Master mobo

It's all working great.

I'm thinking of using the AORUS as well, but I see a fair amount of reliability complaints in the Reviews (Amazon), and a ton of people saying the BIOS suck. How's your experience been so far? Would you buy it again? Thanks.

 

[sharknice]

I'm thinking of using the AORUS as well, but I see a fair amount of reliability complaints in the Reviews (Amazon), and a ton of people saying the BIOS suck. How's your experience been so far? Would you buy it again? Thanks.

I haven't had any problems with it, but I haven't messed with it a ton, maybe people having problems are doing more than me.

I'm currently running a stable 5.1Ghz and memory is at 4000Mhz.

I set my memory to use xmp, changed my cpu max steps for overclocking, and fooled around with the fan curves.

Installed their software, the fan controlling stuff works fine. The rgb lighting stuff works fine. The motherboard light syncs with my ram and the case light strips.

The monitoring software has problems with multimonitors. It's completely hidden until I alt+space bar and maximize it, and opening a full screen game causes it to hide itself again. Annoying but works fine otherwise.

They have a phone app that is supposed to allow you to control the lighting but it didn't work for me and was pretty sketchy looking. It asks for permissions it shouldn't need and most of the reviews are complaining it doesn't work.

The actual hardware has worked fine for me. The layout could be improved a bit though.

The front usb c connection that connects to the case is kind of in a stupid spot, instead of at the edge it's towards the middle, and the cable doesn't fit snug, it could easily come loose.

The front audio connection for the case is blocked by some graphics cards if they're in the bottom pci slot. I can't use it.

Both of those layout problems are also problems in most other motherboards though.

Overall I'm happy with it and would buy it again. All the problems I have with it are minor things I don't really care about.

 

[Frraksurred]

I haven't had any problems with it, but I haven't messed with it a ton, maybe people having problems are doing more than me.

I'm currently running a stable 5.1Ghz and memory is at 4000Mhz.

I set my memory to use xmp, changed my cpu max steps for overclocking, and fooled around with the fan curves.

Installed their software, the fan controlling stuff works fine. The rgb lighting stuff works fine. The motherboard light syncs with my ram and the case light strips.

The monitoring software has problems with multimonitors. It's completely hidden until I alt+space bar and maximize it, and opening a full screen game causes it to hide itself again. Annoying but works fine otherwise.

They have a phone app that is supposed to allow you to control the lighting but it didn't work for me and was pretty sketchy looking. It asks for permissions it shouldn't need and most of the reviews are complaining it doesn't work.

The actual hardware has worked fine for me. The layout could be improved a bit though.

The front usb c connection that connects to the case is kind of in a stupid spot, instead of at the edge it's towards the middle, and the cable doesn't fit snug, it could easily come loose.

The front audio connection for the case is blocked by some graphics cards if they're in the bottom pci slot. I can't use it.

Both of those layout problems are also problems in most other motherboards though.

Overall I'm happy with it and would buy it again. All the problems I have with it are minor things I don't really care about.

All good info, thanks for taking the time. I only bought 3200 memory, I should have probably researched that a bit longer. Glad to hear it has been stable for you, hope both of ours last for the life of our builds. I bit the bullet earlier today.