Review Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master Review: Overbuilt, M.2 Abundance

[Admin]

The Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master is an upper mid-range 12th Gen board designed for gamers, with five M.2 sockets, 105A VRMs, 10GbE and integrated Wi-Fi 6E, along with 11 USB ports. Its $469.99 price isn’t low, but it’s loaded with features and compares favorably overall to other similarly priced options.

Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master Review: Overbuilt, M.2 Abundance : Read more

 

[tlmiller76]

I can't believe $470 is considered "upper mid-range". Still seems INSANELY high end price to me. If $500 for a motherboard is mid range, it's time to move to laptops.

 

[excalibur1814]

Would have been nice to have seen the exposed M.2 sockets.

 

[DisplayJunkie]

> "Upper Mid-range pricing ($469.99)"

I vehemently reject your framing of the pricing this way. I don't know if manufacturers are pressuring publications to use the 'framing effect' or similar cognitive bias to steer consumers towards thinking they need to spend this much (and thus buying their higher margin products), but I think I am far from alone in rejecting this premise.

I'm sure much of the cost can be justified by the major factors that are well known (high inflation and its causes, new tech cost, etc.), but in the end I think the framing is still manipulative and the price far too high.

 

[btmedic04]

A $470 motherboard is firmly in the high end segment. The market speak used in the intro to convey this as "upper mid range" is disgusting

 

[Co BIY]

CPU prices are stable and performance is increasing but motherboard pricing is going crazy. Why?

An article on the drivers of these insane price increases would be interesting to me.

None of the boards make sense for a i5-12600k.

 

[jp7189]

Typo in the specs table; the board uses DDR5 not DDR4. Gave me a pause when I saw a $470 board using DDR4.