The Biostar Z690A Valkyrie:
The bundle:
A little tour through the bundle of this Z790 Aorus Elite AX to see if its bundle is well supplied. Without surprise, we find something quite standard, SATA cables, manual, CD and Wi-Fi antenna. A bundle in adequacy with its price.
Architecture:
Just like Z690 chipset, Z790 version officially supports PCIe 5.0 offering higher storage performance than on previous generation. However, at the moment, no component is yet compatible with this standard. The other big change is the support of DDR5 allowing to reach higher data rates but also higher memory capacity.
The different heat sinks :
The dimensions of the board are 305 mm x 244 mm, which corresponds to the ATX format. The dominant colors on the PCB are black and gray. We will find some RGB lighting on the chipset.
On the cooling side, we have for the VRM a huge aluminum heatsink covering the IO. For the socket, we have two radiators, one of which is quite massive for the first M.2 slot.
Four m.2 SSD slots:
We start with the M.2 slot connected to the CPU in 4.0 which comes to be placed above the first PCIe slot. The latter is cooled by a passive radiator. Then we have three M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots between the PCIe slots, one of which supports SATA.
Technically, there are three PCIe 4.0 x4 slots and one PCIe 4.0 x4/SATA. You shouldn’t be short of storage slots. The SATA is more restricted with four slots.
We also note the arrival of the M.2 EZ-Latch Plus and PCIe EZ-Latch systems. The M.2 EZ-Latch Plus allows to mount SSDs in M.2 format without tools. The PCIe EZ-Latch allows for easier removal of graphics cards.
The socket and PCIe:
The space around the socket is quite airy except for the top part of the socket. This can cause incompatibilities with some coolers that could hit the capacitors. The VRM heat sinks are spaced far enough from the socket to allow for cooling systems.
This Z790 Aorus ELite AX supports dual channel DDR5 memory kits up to 7600 Mt/s (OC) and for a maximum amount of 128 GB. There is one PCIe X16 5.0 slot and two PCIe X16 4.0 slots operating in x4. The last two X16 slots are wired in X4 on the Z790 chipset.
To power all this little world, the board has a 24 pin connector and 8+8 pins next to the power stages.
