Gigabyte invited us to come down to sunny San Diego for a few days to show us what they have in store regarding their next generation motherboards - all with the theme of "Fast Track to Gen X - SPEED SIMPLIFIED" and also take us onto the USS Midway Museum experience, as it is a major landmark of the city. These upcoming motherboards set to soon be officially announced take advantage of future processor capabilities on the LGA 1700 socket. In total the new X series spans eight boards from the B760M Aorus Elite X AX M-ATX offering to the Z790 Aorus Tachyon X. While pricing isn't yet available for all of them, we did get some details of five at the center of this product stack, ranging from $279.99 for the Z790 Aorus Elite X AX to $999.99 for the Z790 Aorus Xtreme X.

The new line of boards will work with current generation Intel processors but specifically provide a foundation for next generation processors as well, with certain overclocking abilities catered to those future CPUs.Gigabyte took the opportunity to introduce several core USP that back up the theme by focusing on "fast" and "simple." On one hand, the new boards allow for overclocking of DDR5 up to 8266 MHz and beyond easily with preset XMP profiles in their new and improved BIOS. On top of that, Gigabyte has partnered with HWiNFO to provide additional access to Memory and BIOS tuning capabilities. The provided version of the app is also appropriately skinned with Aorus branding.

In addition several of the new boards to be offered will include WiFi 7 with high-gain antennas, once again underlining the theme of "fast." Gigabyte has also redesigned the M.2 latches which no longer utilize plastic but are metal & spring loaded. This makes installing SSDs or heatsinks tool-less, without having to worry if the material will break over time. Also for additional durability, the main PCIe slots on these boards are reinforced beyond what has become the norm these days while firmly secured on the backside with a mounting plate and screws.

Even with all these user facing aspects, Gigabyte has improved the manufacturing to enable features like higher memory speeds with something they call "Back Drilling Technology." This eliminates unused ends of vertical traces between the layers of the PCB, which in turn reduces signal reflections and timing issues. This manufacturing step is actually visible on these new motherboards when looking at the backside of the PCB.While we did not get to see the entire product stack in person, Gigabyte did have four boards on display, including an all-white Z790 Aorus Pro X. As implied, it sports a white PCB as well as white and light gray components. Besides the color, the motherboard offers a good mix of all the unique selling points of this motherboard generation from Gigabyte including the stronger Ultra Durable PCI-E Armor slot alongside the EZ-Latch release, Back Drilling and M.2 Thermal Guard XL which is a tall heatsink for drive cooling purposes. On top of that, this board offers an onboard USB-C header, so that you may plug in compatible devices like LCD screens or storage directly and utilize these within the system in a clean fashion. As with all these motherboards, the Z790 Aorus Pro X employs the M.2 EZ-Latch system as well. In terms of retail pricing, Gigabyte communicated $389.99 for this model.The Z790 Aorus Elite X WIFI 7 come in at a lower $289.99 with the latest generation wireless standard and black PCB. While this board lacks the internal USB-C connector, it does come with a slightly more compact M.2 Thermal Guard to passively cool any SSD, while still sporting the core USP like Ultra Durable PCI-E Armor, EZ Latch for M.2 and GPU slots as well as the Back Drilling manufacturing process. One noteworthy omission on this board is the fact that it lacks a M.2 PCIe 5.0 x4 slot which the higher end models do offer.At the higher-end, the Z790 Aorus Master X includes the XL heatsink, EZ-Latch Plus for even easier ejection of the GPU by utilizing a button at the edge of the motherboard. All other features are also present, as well as M.2 PCIe 5.0 x4. This variant of the new line-up is meant to cost $549.99 and sits right above the white Z790 Aorus Pro X in the overall product stack for this board generation.The biggest board we were shown was the Z790 Aorus Extreme X, with its embedded LCD screen and M.2 Thermal Guard Extreme heatsink. The entire rear of the board is armored up as well. This board offers all the bells and whistles, and has an MSRP of $999.99.While not shown physically, Gigabyte is also planning to release a B760M Aorus Elite X AX board. This M-ATX variant is all white as well and is the other SKU alongside the Pro X to feature the Sensor Panel link connector as Gigabyte calls the internal USB-C plug. On top of that, there will be a skin to show off data in a clean, branded fashion on any screen you may plug into that port.Besides the boards, there are additional features and details worth mentioning, which are quite numerous as well. On one hand, Gigabyte now offers Wifi antennas with both 4 dBi omni-directional as well as a 5 dBi directional signal for best performance. These have a magnetic base and are even color matched with the boards these come bundled with.Then there are vented IO backplates which you will find on the Master X as well as the Extreme X to help allow for a little bit of extra air flow across the VRMs and thus have them running a bit cooler as well.Instead of trying to capture all the specifications of each board, Gigabyte provided us with handy slides instead. Details for five boards were provided. There are still three variants for which we will get information at a later stage.