Review : Aorus Z690 Tachyon Motherboard

June 13, 2022

The BIOS

The BIOS :

As far as the BIOS is concerned, by default, you land on a page with the basic information of your BIOS. In order to access all the settings, you will have to press the F2 key. The first available tab is “Favorites” which allows you to have direct access to the settings you modify most often, as always very useful. The “Tweaker” section, as its name suggests, will be full of options allowing you to set up your processor, your memory kit but also to manage the different voltages. A small “Favorites (F11)” menu allows you to access favourite bios settings.

The “Tweaker” tab contains the various settings for your memory kits and also for your processor. Most of the parameters for adjusting voltages are also found in this section. As a bonus, Aorus offers custom XMP profiles here but nothing really interesting. No complete profiles in this bios… Still in the “Tweaker” tab, we continue the tour of the bios with the part dedicated to the CPU settings. In the “Advanced CPU settings” menu you will have access to :

Changing the core count
Activation of AVX 512
Adaptive overclocking
Hyper threading
And other processor-related options

Next we go to the “Advanced Memory Settings” menu. Here we find the different memory settings, note the important settings:

“Force Training” in the “Extreme Overclocking Setting” menu to be enabled.
“Round trip Latency” in the “Memory Training Settings” menu to be activated.

Still in the “Advanced Memory Settings” menu, we have the “SPD Setup” menu where it is possible to flash custom XMP. Because yes, with DDR5, we have the possibility to create our own XMP. Here, you just have to enter the timings and frequencies in the XMP 4 and 5 columns. Then SET them and save with F10. You will then have to clear cmos for these to appear. And this on all motherboards because the xmp profile is stored in the memory kit.

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We can now move on to setting the voltages in the “Tweaker” tab. Here the VCCSA, VDD/VDDQ and VDD2 voltages can to be monitored.

For the SA we use 1.2V, to be adjusted on Ycruncher for stability by lowering it.

Then for the VDD/VDDQ, we use 1.45V, to be lowered for stability or left as is. Finally for the VDD2, it depends on the CPU and the motherboard. In my case, 1.45v works for 6800Mt/s, 1.4v for 6600Mt/s and 1.25V for 6400Mt/s.

The memory voltage is located in the “DDR5 voltage control” menu, a VDD of 1.5V is not to be exceeded in daily use use for a well cooled hynix kit, a 0.05V difference between VDD and VDDQ memory is often beneficial.

Finally, in the “Advanced Voltage Settings” menu, you will have access to additional voltage settings for the CPU. Namely the LLC for static overclocking and the AC/DC load line for adaptive overclocking.