Board Layout

Compared to its predecessor, the Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Master has been given a cosmetic facelift. The common Aorus themed orange accents are now replaced with a gray color pallet. This in turn allows for the user to set any desired colors for the I/O and chipset areas thanks to built-in RGB lighting.

Flip the motherboard around and there isn't much to talk about. The entire back is covered by a backplate designed to relieve stress in a uniform manner and provide additional cooling with thermal pads sandwiched in between. This isn't just for show and serves a purpose outside of being a hazard guard, which is a bit rare these days.


Gigabyte has given little room to work with for those planning to use air-coolers. While the conflict zone around the LGA 1700 socket is clear of capacitors, the surrounding heatsinks will pose a challenge due to their height in close proximity. Thankfully, the M.2 heatsink can be removed completely if necessary.


The Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Master offers three PCI Express x16 slots reinforced for extra stress support. Gigabyte opted for a single PCIe Gen5 with a total of x16 lanes coming from the CPU. The lower two slots are physically x16, but internally wired for x4 PCIe Gen3. These will also be disabled in certain storage configurations.


There are five M.2 sockets on the Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Master, four of which are Gen4 x4, and all of them feature full-coverage heatsinks. Gigabyte has gone the extra mile and placed thermal pads on the motherboard as well. While I appreciate the extra care put into cooling these M.2 drives, Gigabyte has made it incredibly hard to decipher which is Gen4 or Gen3 and which PCIe slots and/or SATA ports will be disabled.

After some information digging and looking at the block diagram inside the manual, it seems only the lowest PCIe slot will be disabled when the M.2 slot directly above it is in use. Two SATA ports will be disabled as well if the M.2 socket closet to the SATA ports is used. Note that none of this can be forced on or off in the BIOS.


Gigabyte has placed a number of voltage measuring points above the DIMM slots. These read points from left to right are VDD2_CPU, VCCIN_AUX_CPU, VCCGT, V1P8_CPU, V1P05_CPU, and V0P82_PCH. These are great for heavy precision CPU overclocking, but not for those looking for a more expanded view. Lacking VCCSA and VDDQ TX read points means the BIOS or software is the only way to know what those voltages are, and they are directly related to memory stability. Personally, I would have removed the i-GPU read point and replaced it with either of the two I mentioned.


The board has a total of six SATA 6 Gb/s ports on the side, angled 90 degrees from the board. These SATA ports are labeled as two through seven. I am still not sure why or what motherboard vendors are reserving the number one for, but this numbering keeps showing up in the products I receive. Regardless of the naming, ports two and three will be disabled if the M.2 socket closet to the SATA ports is populated.


The Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Master offers an assortment of ports for a lot of connectivity options. This includes an optical S/PDIF Out port, Wi-Fi 6E, and 10 GbE LAN. Gigabyte has included a number of USB ports, with the blue Type-A ports supporting 5 Gbps bandwidth. These can be used for peripherals like a keyboard, mouse, USB headphones or game controller. All of these generally do not consume enough bandwidth to warrant consuming the 10 Gbps ports on these devices.

• 1x Q-Flash Plus button
• 1x Clear CMOS button
• 2x SMA antenna connectors (2T2R)
• 1x DisplayPort
• 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port
• 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C port
• 5x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports (red)
• 4x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports (blue)
• 1x 10GbE LAN
• 5x audio jacks
• Optical S/PDIF Out port