What’s the best gaming motherboard for i9-9900K? and Why?

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If you’ve been eyeing the latest generation of Intel CPUs closely while eagerly waiting for the right time to upgrade your hardware, you couldn’t have picked a better time to start building with the Xtreme Combo! AORUS lately announced the limited edition Z390 AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE 5G Premium Edition Bundle which pairs the Red Dot Award winning Z390 AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE motherboard with pretested Intel® Core™ i9-9900K CPUs that can hit 5.1GHz across all 8 cores!

All Cores 5.1 GHz

At the core of this bundle is the Z390 AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE motherboard. While the idea of overclocking all cores to 5.1 GHz sounds rather, well…extreme, GIGABYTE designed its Z390 flagship motherboard to unlock this caliber of performance consistently. So what’s the benefit of hitting 5.1GHz on all 8 cores of the i9-9900K? Why is it such an impressive benchmark? Well simply put, being able to run all 8 cores at 5.1GHz means that you’re able to maximize performance without the tradeoff between higher clock speeds and core counts. At higher clock speeds, your processor can compute calculations faster so the applications you’re running are more responsive and run faster and more smoothly. A higher core count means your processor can simultaneously process multiple tasks more efficiently so you can run multitask more smoothly. This is impressive because CPU design constraints usually mean that higher core counts come with slower clock speeds and lower core counts come with higher clock speeds but this powerful combination of motherboard and CPU gets you to a stunningly fast 5.1GHz across all 8 cores, leaving this constraint in the dust. You get the best of both worlds, faster and more stable performance.

World’s Best Gaming Processor

Recent generations of Intel CPUs have come with higher and higher core counts and the trend continues with the most recent 9th Gen. Intel CPUs. Intel’s top mainstream offering this generation, the Intel i9-9900K CPU, features 33% more cores than the previous generation at 8 cores and 16 threads which means the user has a lot to work with this time around. With higher base and turbo clock rates, the i9-9900K is one of the fastest gaming processors on the market. It also comes with built-in protection against the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. The demand for what Intel dubs as “the world’s best gaming processor” was so strong that there was a shortage of these highly sought after CPUs as soon as they became available last year. So if you’re looking for that monstrous CPU that can unlock performance like you’ve never experienced before, the i9-9900K is that CPU you’re been looking for.

Win The Silicon Lottery

It is important to take note that not every processor model of the same SKU is identical to each other in terms of performance! For example, if you go and purchase an i9-9900K CPU, it will perform differently from another i9-9900K CPU. How big the difference is depends on well, quite frankly, luck! This is commonly referred to as the Silicon Lottery. Like a lottery, it’s a toss-up which CPU delivers better performance. It might sound ridiculous but think about how CPUs are manufactured. Intel’s 9th Gen. microprocessors are produced with 14nm fabrication technology. That’s right! Nanometers! We’re talking about a billionth of a meter. Incredibly tiny is an understatement here. It may sound trivial but even the slightest differences in material quality between microprocessors at the atomic level can result in massive performance differences. Due to these material quality differences, this means that as a consumer, you’re relying on luck to get the best processor. However, if you’re already spending top dollar to purchase a high caliber CPU, wouldn’t you want a guarantee that you can get the best CPU available instead of relying on luck? Otherwise why spend all that money if you’re just getting middle of the pack performance from a top of the line CPU? That’s why GIGABYTE offers a solution to help you bypass the Silicon Lottery and make it so you get the processor quality you deserve. The solution to addressing the discrepancies in performance between CPUs is called “Chip Binning.”

“Chip Binning” is the process of pretesting these CPUs beforehand to “sort out” which CPUs with the same part number can hit higher clock speeds. This way, you can sort the CPUs from lower to higher performance. “Chip Binning” allows you to pick out the CPUs that are faster and thus, more highly valued. Pretesting and sorting these CPUs is the difference between you getting a good CPU and you getting a great CPU. For the average consumer it’s obviously not a practical solution because purchasing a bunch of processors and having to test each one is highly impractical. That would be like having to sort out fruit at the local market by tasting each apple or banana. Oh, and each apple or banana would cost 200USD+. Unless you have access to an abundance of these processors, it’s just not feasible. That is why it makes more sense for hardware manufacturers to do the pretesting and sorting. With this premium edition bundle, the engineers and overclockers at GIGABYTE have already done the sorting for you. The i9-9900K CPUs that can hit 5.1 GHz across all cores have already been sorted so that you get a 5.1GHz ready CPU that can hit those whopping speeds on all cores when paired with your new Z390 AORUS XTREME Waterforce motherboard. Instead of playing the silicon lottery and having to bank on luck to get the best i9-9900K of the bunch, skip the lottery and cash in on your winnings. Here’s a video on this process with one of our top overclockers:

While overclocking multi-core CPUs to 5.1 GHz on all cores is impressive, it also means higher power consumption. The higher the power consumption, the more excess heat will be generated. This excess heat can damage your CPU as well as other vital components on the board if the motherboard isn’t designed with heat dissipation as a core asset. An ideal cooling solution is absolutely necessary to protect these components from the excess heat. Z390 AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE is designed with, as its name suggests, extreme cooling. The pre-fitted cooling monoblock provides liquid cooling coverage to the most essential parts of the motherboard, the power delivery section, CPU, PCH, and even extends to the M.2 slots. Heat dissipation for the VRM area is hugely critical when using high-end CPUs with high power consumption and the cooling monoblock does more than enough to keep that area icy cool so that thermal throttling doesn’t slow down your i9-9900K’s performance.

(built by envious mods)

Award Winning Design

Aside from providing excellent cooling for the motherboard’s key areas, the pre-fitted monoblock and its acrylic casing gives the board an ultra sleek and futuristic look. Adding in the controllable RGB lighting that illuminate the coolant waterways and you can see it’s a board that would look great in many trendy builds. The stylish design caught the attention of the Red Dot evaluation committee and earned GIGABYTE its first Red Dot design award. The prestigious Red Dot design awards have been awarded since 1993 and recognize excellence in design quality. The Z390 AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE was awarded a Red Dot design award recently and its flashy design earned the approval of some of the most renowned design experts in the world. Design goes hand in hand with functionality. Excellent design goes a long way in offering the user added value.

So don’t hesitate to upgrade to the latest Intel platform if you’re looking for remarkable performance improvements over previous generation technology. You’re getting the marquee combination of the GIGABYTE flagship motherboard and high-end Intel CPU while winning the Silicon Lottery with pretested CPUs guaranteed to be some of the fastest available on the market!

Learn more: Z390 AORUS XTREME WATERFORCE 5G
Watch more video on AORUS Youtube Channel HERE