Gigabyte Introduces the X299 Aorus Master Motherboard

Gigabyte has just announced another socket LGA2066 motherboard, the X299 Aorus Master. The “Master” brand extension is positioned below the flagship Aorus Extreme, which would make this board a successor to the X299 Aorus Gaming 7. This board gets a new design scheme that is in line with Gigabyte’s Z390 motherboard offerings. Out of the box it has support for Core X 9000-series processors.

gigabyte x299 aorus master 1

While the board is wider than ATX, it is not quite E-ATX. It will draw power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, two 8-pin EPS, and an optional 6-pin PCIe power. It makes use of a 12 phase VRM that is cooled by a 2-stage heatsink.

As far as expansion slots go you have four PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x16/NC/x16/NC or x16/NC/x8/x8 or x8/x8/x8/x8). Both the memory slots and PCI-Express slots are metal reinforced. For storage there are three M.2 slots (PCIe x4), which all have integrated heatsinks, and eight SATA 6GB/s ports. USB includes four USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports (2 on the rear panel, two by header).

gigabyte x299 aorus master 2

Networking includes a 2.5G wired interface powered by the Realtek Dragon 8125AG controller, a 1G wired interface powered by the Intel i219-V controller, and 802.11ac + Bluetooth 5 interface powered by the Intel 9260 WLAN card.

Audio on this board is powered by an ESS Sabre 9218 DAC (130 dBA SNR) which drives the main front + headphones channel with a Ti Burr Brown OPA2111KP OPAMPs and WIMA capacitors. Then you have a 120 dBA SNR Realtek ALC1220VB that pulls the remaining channels.

Other features on this board include an integrated I/O cover, dual-BIOS, POST code display, USB BIOS flashback, and of course RGB lighting. Pricing is expected to be $399.

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