The Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite Duo X is a motherboard that launched at the same time Intel’s Core Ultra 200S Plus series processors hit the market. This motherboard is unique in a handful of ways, allowing PC users to maximise the performance of the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core Ultra 5 250K Plus.
What Am I Looking At?
The Z890 Aorus Elite Duo X is an ATX board that is also one of several Z890 refreshes of the generation. It’s also one of the first to support CQDIMMs, short of Clock Quad-Rank Unbuffered Dual In-Line Memory modules. Basically, memory modules that high density and high speed.
The support of CQDIMMs mean means that the board has more real estate due to the removal of RAM slots, which in turn has allowed Gigabyte to rearranged certain components across the board, literally.At RM1,499, though, it’s a board that sits on the fence between mid-range and high-end, although it does come with plenty of goodies that I would classify as premium.
By that, the other specifications of the Z890 Aorus Elite Duo X include a PCIe 5.0 x16 interface, two PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, five M.2 SSD slots, which I’ll expand in the next section; and four SATA 6Gbps slots. Oh, and all M.2 slots are tool-less, which is a godsend.
Around the back, the rear IO is equipped with four USB-A 2.0 ports, two USB-A 3.2 Gen2 ports, three USB-A 3.2 Gen1 ports, one USB4 40Gbps port, a 5GbE Realtek LAN port, and an Intel Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 wireless port with an easy-clip antenna. Interestingly, the board has a built-in DisplayPort instead of a HDMI slot.
What’s Good About It?
The Z890 Aorus Elite Duo X employs Gigabyte’s Duo X technology, which the brand promises will deliver traditional 4-slot memory capacity through two DIMM slots and with increased speeds. Specifically, the brand claims that it will support up to 10,266MT/s, but you’ll have to use lower capacity memory modules. Still on the subject of RAM support, CQDIMM means that those two RAM slots can support capacities of up to 256GB dual-sided DDR5, with each slot supporting up to 128GB.
Thanks to the DUO X technology and the removal of two RAM slots, the extra real estate has allowed Gigabyte to add in an additional PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot right next to the memory slots, complete with a dedicated heatsink too.
As for power delivery, the Z890 Aorus Elite Duo X uses a total of 19 phases. Of course, you can overclock your Core Ultra 200S CPU (while we didn’t do so with ours), and can easily handle any of the CPUs it supports in its class. For that matter, all the ports are evenly spaced, which is a boon for routing cables without having to worry about how you can get that 8-pin CPU power port connected.
What’s The Catch?
To echo the sentiment of my colleague, my issues with the Z890 Aorus Elite Duo X aren’t quite so much pain points, and more niggling gripes. The first, perhaps, is the number of PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots Gigabyte is making available on it.
Sure, it has four PCIe 4.0 M.2 slots onboard, but I think Gigabyte could’ve spared one slot as an additional PCIE 5.0 slot. Granted, being able to populate all five slots would mean that whoever purchases this board is loaded, given the current price of memory and storage, and in all fairness, PCIe 4.0 is still more than plenty.
My other issue is with the rear IO of the Z890 Aorus Elite Duo X, particularly the number of USB-C ports. For all the USB-A ports available, giving only one USB-C port, even if it USB4 with 40Gbps bitrate, it feels like Gigabyte is being a little stingy, and that it could’ve at least provided one more USB-C. Then there is that one peeve: the fact that the Z890 Aorus Elite Duo X supports CQDIMM memory and up to 256GB of it brings one thought to my mind: who the hell, especially with the current state of the memory market, would even be able to afford that sort of amount? On a related note, Gigabyte: why on earth would you even want to make that sort of compatibility available on a motherboard like this?
Should I Buy It?
Yes, I would recommend this motherboard. Whether you’re switching allegiance from AMD to Intel, or if you’re embracing either of the blue chipmaker’s Core Ultra 200S Plus series CPUs, the Z890 Aorus Elite Duo X is pretty well-rounded, especially for its asking price.
Photography by John Law.
