Gigabyte to Bundle Overclocked, Cherry-picked Intel Core i9-9900K With $900 Z390 Aorus Xtreme Waterforce

[Raevenlord]

Gigabyte has been stretching its product portfolio for a while now, and it seems the company really wants to be the one to distribute everything on your PC if it can. Of course, no company does this based on its good heart - Gigabyte is putting up a margin on all products, as the whole spirit of business and capitalism requires. Their latest move is to bundle an overclocked, cherry-picked Intel Core i9 9900K CPU with their most expensive motherboard to date, the Z390 Aorus Extreme Waterforce. This motherboard alone retails for $999, and is built from a "Gigabytestein" of parts such as their Z390 Aorus Extreme motherboard ($550) paired with a custom waterblock.

The good part of having the CPU bundled with the motherboard is that Gigabyte has taken the pains of BIOS tweaking to ensure proper, stable operation - each combo has already been tended to by Gigabyte's engineers - stress testing included - and is guaranteed to work at the cherry-picked 5.1 GHz frequency on all cores. The bundle pricing isn't known as of yet, but pairing the $999 motherboard with a CPU that usually retails for around $525 (due to price fluctuations on account of Intel's CPU shortages) amounts to a cool $1,524 - add in a Gigabyte tax and the price of cherry-picking these CPUs (Silicon Lottery has these i9-9900K going for an out of stock $939), and a bundle price of $1,899 would still be worth it - if you really (really) want that motherboard.



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[Deleted member 24505]

Dayum that is fugly

 

[Dammeron]

"RGBs! Not the RGBs! They're in my eyes! Argghhh!!!"

-Nick Cage 2019

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Seems like a poor investment with Zen 2 coming. Eventually Intel will get its act together and launch a proper CPU of this class. Even then, why not go HDET with this amount of money instead?

 

[Caring1]

Intel's "fancy" i9 packaging is a poor attempt at matching the beauty of Threadrippers presentation piece.

 

[Digital Dreams]

Intel's "fancy" i9 packaging is a poor attempt at matching the beauty of Threadrippers presentation piece.

Yep.

 

[TheMadDutchDude]

That much for a board from a vendor that has really fallen through the cracks of late is just laughable.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

I think you end up barfing on it while fitting it

 

[Zubasa]

I think you end up barfing on it while fitting it

I would assume you will be puking rainbows

 

[Dave65]

Intel's "fancy" i9 packaging is a poor attempt at matching the beauty of Threadrippers presentation piece.

Yepps!

 

[noel_fs]

i bet the binned advertisement is literally fake news

 

[Paganstomp]

Mommy! Turn it off!! It's scaring little Timmy!

 

[Assimilator]

Standard version of the board is $550 and this version is $1,000, how does a waterblock add $450 to the price? Well, I guess fools and their money...

 

[hat]

Still unimpressive. I understand 5.1GHz all core is an improvement over 5.0GHz on a single core... but really it's not all that much.

 

[Abaidor]

Gigabyte needs to go back to the drawing board and reconsider everything that has to do with "Aesthetics".....there offerings remind me of a circus and my problem is not RGB which can be nice if used properly. Their designs are always too busy, with cheesy slogans and tacky looks.....

They seriously need to hire a proven industrial Designer!

 

[Ruru]

Intel's "fancy" i9 packaging is a poor attempt at matching the beauty of Threadrippers presentation piece.

That i9 box reminds me of a tabletop RPG dice.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

That i9 box reminds me of a tabletop RPG dice.

A D12 i think, use to use them dice to play D+D

 

[randomUser]

Still unimpressive. I understand 5.1GHz all core is an improvement over 5.0GHz on a single core... but really it's not all that much.

My i9-9900K can't reach 5GHz all core stable no matter what ( well maybe if i set voltage to 1.36V+, but thats not the voltagefor the daily use).
For me, 5.1Ghz all core seems impressive (unless it IS running at 1.35V+).

 

[bogami]

in Europe, prices are from 1050€, with no costs up to 1300€.
For the same product, without the included liquid-cooled element . No LQ, price is € 534 to € 575, and also here is the price across all limits for some diamond candy ,worth 20€ or less investments
. The difference in price could comprise the entire liquid cooling system, and not parts that cost € 120.
There is no 10 gb / s net !and PLX chip!, just a miserable chipset offer with 30 € AUDIO upgrades, you can get much cheaper board.

 

[Vayra86]

Gigabyte needs to go back to the drawing board and reconsider everything that has to do with "Aesthetics".....there offerings remind me of a circus and my problem is not RGB which can be nice if used properly. Their designs are always too busy, with cheesy slogans and tacky looks.....

They seriously need to hire a proven industrial Designer!

Gigabyte isn't a trendy brand at all. Aorus was far too late to the market as a brand and despite flashy colors and lights, the quality is abysmal. This is a company of followers, not innovators. Its a different world from say MSI or Asus. Yes they do their tacky RGB too, but they also push the envelope with fine tuned designs. The quality is also a lot more consistent.

Ironically, Gigabyte was usually a good address for bang/buck. With Aorus they destroyed that USP and gave us nothing in return, trying to ride the RGB wave. So you have this odd combination of premium pricing over bottom barrel parts. Fans are a good example, but re-used or badly chosen heatsinks and direct contact heatpipes on GPUs are other such examples. It just screams lazy and cheap.

 

[Ruru]

in Europe, prices are from 1050€, with no costs up to 1300€.
For the same product, without the included liquid-cooled element . No LQ, price is € 534 to € 575, and also here is the price across all limits for some diamond candy ,worth 20€ or less investments
. The difference in price could comprise the entire liquid cooling system, and not parts that cost € 120.
There is no 10 gb / s net !and PLX chip!, just a miserable chipset offer with 30 € AUDIO upgrades, you can get much cheaper board.

Here in Finland in my favourite PC shop the motherboard is 1149eur, 9900K is 579eur. Of course a cherry-picked CPU costs more, so something like 1900eur could be the price.

 

[phill]

That much for a board from a vendor that has really fallen through the cracks of late is just laughable.

This. How many X99 SOC's I've had and with just ambient cooling, they've all died... Can't say I'm all too impressed...
And I'm not such a fan of all the RGB or the board layout, it's just not nice for me...

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

too overkill for a mainstream desktop SKU imo... the CPU + VRM waterblock design seems overkill too... With 3rd gen Ryzen coming in a few months, I think lots of builders are going to stay away from this expensive combo for now...

 

[Hardware Geek]

too overkill for a mainstream desktop SKU imo... the CPU + VRM waterblock design seems overkill too... With 3rd gen Ryzen coming in a few months, I think lots of builders are going to stay away from this expensive combo for now...

This isn't meant to be a mainstream SKU, however, even considering that this is very much an enthusiast product, there are far better options.

 

[Deleted member 24505]

This isn't meant to be a mainstream SKU, however even considering that the is very much an enthusiast product, there are far better options.

It looks like they let a bunch of junior high school kids design it.