GIGABYTE Z890I AORUS Ultra Motherboard Review - Mini-ITX with surprisingly good thermals

TweakTown Rating: 90%

Our Verdict

Users looking for a mature and feature-rich Z890 board for use with a 200 Plus series CPU should check out this affordable GIGABYTE.

Pros

• Solid VRM
• Very good cooling (for an ITX board)
• Good looks
• Thunderbolt 4
• DIY friendly

Cons

• Sub-par audio codec
• Limited availability
• Needs a price drop

Should you buy it?

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

I just love all things Mini-ITX. Every time a new model comes across my desk, I just have to smile. It's impossible to cram the features of an ATX board into the Mini-ITX form factor, but if you're like me and build a system with a single graphics card, an SSD or two, and two RAM sticks, then it's easy to build a fully functional system the size of a shoe box.

The GIGABYTE Z890I AORUS Ultra isn't the newest model on the market, but its BIOS can be updated with full support for the Core Ultra 200 Plus series CPUs. We like both the 250K Plus and 270K Plus, and a system with this board and a Plus CPU has a lot to offer.

Perhaps it's a reflection of the lukewarm reception the original Arrow Lake family received, but GIGABYTE has only two Mini-ITX boards for the LGA 1851 socket. They are the Z890I AORUS Ultra and the B860I AORUS Pro Ice. Though the company has released several refreshed LGA 1851 boards, its Mini-ITX range doesn't feature any new models. That's ok, as they have all the key features that are important on a 2026 board. The Z890I AORUS Ultra includes WiFi 7, PCIe 5.0 GPU and SSD slots, Thunderbolt 4, and a range of DIY friendly features. In other words, it's got the core features necessary to build a system ranging from a compact, out-of-sight-and-mind box to a fully featured gaming system with an RTX 5090, 128GB of RAM, and the fastest SSDs on the market.

Other key features include support for two M.2 SSDs, a capable VRM with good cooling, support for DDR5-9000+, and an attractive aesthetic with some built-in ARGB.

The Z890I AORUS Ultra is available for $289. That's a little on the high side, given that many first-generation Z890 boards are seeing heavy discounts - including from GIGABYTE itself. But keep an eye out, as a board that's over a year old is sure to see discounts during the upcoming summer sales events.

Packaging, Accessories, and Overview

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The GIGABYTE Z890I AORUS Ultra comes in a compact box.

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As with all motherboard boxes, the rear shows off the key features and provides a detailed specification rundown.

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The board comes with a decent set of accessories. Alongside the usual items like a WiFi antenna and a pair of SATA cables, GIGABYTE included two cable adapters that connect standard-size 4-pin cables to smaller headers on the PCB.

There are also M.2 bits and pieces, some stickers, and a quick-start installation guide.

Motherboard Overview

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The board features an attractive, mostly black color scheme. The CPU socket area is reasonably spacious, but those with fat fingers (like me) might find it a bit tight when installing a CPU cooler and backplate. The board includes a built-in RGB section located atop the rear I/O area, and you get another pair of ARGB headers on the PCB. That should be enough to deck out a system with lighting, particularly if you have a cooler or AIO with a splitter cable. Other key features include three fan headers, a reset jumper, and a CMOS clear jumper.

The USB header complement includes a single Type-C 10Gbps and headers offering two 5Gbps ports, and two USB 2.0 ports.

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The rear of the board is uncovered, and you'll find the second M.2 slot here. It supports PCIe 4.0 x4 drives. Some care will be needed regarding cooling. It would make sense to use a drive with a heatsink, but even so, it would not be wise to thrash a high-performance drive placed here in order to avoid high temperatures.

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The Z890I AORUS Ultra's two DIMM slots support DDR5-9200+ speeds. You'll probably be able to get a little more than that with a Plus series CPU. Of course, you'll need CUDIMMs to get anywhere near that.

On the left is the PCIe quick-release mechanism button.

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Mini-ITX boards just don't have the space to include high-phase-count VRM systems. The Z890I AORUS Ultra features an 8+1+2-phase design with 105A stages. It's easily enough to power our 270K Plus chip. However, I wouldn't want to push the board too hard with overclocking, as the heatsinks just don't have the surface area of those common to ATX boards. As long as you have good case airflow, temperatures are well within limits.

GIGABYTE designed the VRM's heatsink with a heatpipe that connects both banks to the chipset heatsink. This should lend itself well to building with a downward blowing CPU cooler fan.

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Here you can see the clever chipset heatsink design, with the PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 slot embedded. This heatsink is quite tall and has a deceptively large surface area compared to some chipset heatsinks. It is not directly connected to the M.2 heatsink.

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The M.2 heatsink has a large surface area and connects to the board via a toolless retention mechanism. The support for dual-sided drives is also notable. It's always important to pay attention to cooling in a compact case, but as long as you provide the board with appropriate airflow, the Z890I AORUS Ultra features one of the best VRM and M.2 cooling assemblies I've come across on a Mini-ITX motherboard.

The board includes two SATA ports.

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The I/O section of the Z890I AORUS Ultra is best described as adequate. The USB complement includes a single 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 port, which also supports 20Gbps USB4 (not the full 40Gbps speed). The other ports consist of three 10Gbps ports and two 5Gbps ports. I do wish GIGABYTE would label these clearly. Six ports is the absolute minimum any board should have. I'd like to see a pair of USB 2.0 ports here for basic devices like a keyboard and mouse.

A Realtek RTL8125 controller delivers 2.5G LAN. 5G is becoming more common, though it's not yet ubiquitous on mid-range boards. An Intel Killer BE202 WiFi 7 controller supports 160MHz connections only and also provides Bluetooth 5.4 support. 320MHz support would be appreciated.

Next are the audio ports, which consist of 3.5mm line-in and line-out ports and S/PDIF. An aging Realtek ALC897 codec drives these. That chip should be relegated to budget models only these days.

Finally, there's HDMI, DP, and a BIOS flashback button. The latter is critical, as the older stock of the Z890I AORUS Ultra will not support Core Ultra Plus CPUs without an updated BIOS.

With HDMI, DP, and Thunderbolt 4, the board offers excellent display flexibility when used with Intel's integrated graphics.

UEFI and Test System

UEFI

GIGABYTE's Aorus-themed BIOSes haven't changed much in recent years, so their layout will remain familiar to anyone who's owned a GIGABYTE board. The Z890I AORUS Ultra features some design tweaks that match the board's theme. It features an attractive color scheme, and most options are easy to find.

I particularly like the fan control page, which is highly customizable, and it displays temperatures from all the board's onboard sensors.

Test System

• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 270K Plus - Buy from Amazon
• GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X - Buy from Amazon
• RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB 2x16GB DDR5-6000 CL30 - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux - Buy from Amazon
• OS Storage: Teamgroup T-Force Z540 2TB - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex Titanium 850W - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro - Buy from Amazon

Benchmarks - Rendering and Encoding

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench 2024 is a reliable, widely used benchmark that measures both single- and multi-threaded performance. Note that all our benchmark testing used the latest available Windows updates.

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We've switched over to the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus for ongoing Z890 motherboard reviews. So far, the number of results is limited. It's a good start for the Z890I AORUS Ultra.

Blender

Intel's Core Ultra CPUs perform well in this test thanks to their high core count. We use the Whitelands demo file and record how long it takes to render the image.

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The margins here aren't significant in percentage terms. This test is far more influenced by the CPU than the motherboard.

Handbrake

Handbrake is a simple-to-use video encoding and transcoding application. Here, we convert a 4K movie trailer to 1080p. The results below show the average FPS, where a higher value indicates the task will take less time to complete.

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The two GIGABYTE boards are again leading here.

Benchmarks - File Compression and Memory Latency

7Zip

7Zip is a commonly used free file compression and decompression app. It's very sensitive to changes in memory speed and latency, and scales with the number of CPU threads.

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My guess is GIGABYTE is setting aggressive memory subtimings that are helping it in tests sensitive to memory performance.

AIDA64 Memory Latency

Memory latency has been an area where Intel has traditionally held an advantage. Chiplet architectures inevitably add some latency compared to monolithic chips. The real-world benefits aren't that important, though.

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Look at how much better the 270K Plus's latency is compared to the 285K.

Benchmarks - 3DMark

3DMark Storage

UL's newest 3DMark SSD Gaming Test is the most comprehensive SSD gaming test ever devised. It is superior to testing against games themselves because, as a trace, it is much more consistent than variations that will occur between runs of the actual game.

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Well, you can't win them all, though the margins are small, as is usually the case.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme

Time Spy Extreme has lost favor as a graphics benchmark to Speed Way and Steel Nomad, but its CPU test is still a good measure of multi-core performance.

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The margins are again small, with only a couple of hundred points separating the boards when measured by CPU score.

Benchmarks - Gaming

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is brutal on graphics cards, but when things like ray tracing are removed, it becomes more sensitive to CPU and memory performance differences.

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It's impressive to see the uplift the 270K Plus achieves over the supposedly faster 285K, particularly the minimum FPS results. Also, it's no surprise that the motherboard makes little difference in graphically limited scenarios.

Horizon Zero Dawn

When using the 'favor performance' preset, Horizon Zero Dawn can achieve high frame rates with powerful graphics cards.

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The differences here are negligible. If you're lucky enough to own an RTX 5090, the margins would be a little larger. Again, these results show the boards with the 270K Plus easily outperform the more expensive 285K.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

Metro Exodus received an update that added improved DLSS support, enhanced ray tracing features, and variable rate shading, among other things. Still, with a powerful graphics card, it is affected by CPU and memory performance at 1080p, though less so with a card like the RTX 4070 Ti Super.

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Only a few frames cover the 270K-equipped boards in this test.

VRM and SSD Temperatures

These tests are performed to show off the differences between each motherboard's cooling assemblies. Each board is subjected to a 20-minute Cinebench loop, while the SSD test records the peak temperature during the lengthy 3DMark Storage test.

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A peak temperature of 64 degrees doesn't look great on the graph, but I still consider this an excellent result given we're looking at a Mini-ITX board. The way our test bench is configured always results in some airflow across the board, which certainly helps. It goes without saying, but moving air across relatively small heatsinks is critical in the cramped confines of an SFF case.

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If the VRM temperatures are good, then this is even better! The Z890I AORUS Ultra's M.2 heatsink has more surface area than many ATX boards in its price range, and the dual-sided thermal pads surely help too.

Final Thoughts

The GIGABYTE Z890I AORUS Ultra is a well-designed board with a particularly impressive cooling apparatus. That alone should weigh heavily when choosing a board for a compact system. It's got a solid core feature set, including PCIe 5.0 GPU and SSD support, WiFi 7, Thunderbolt 4, and support for fast memory. It performed well with our 270K Plus. However, those points aren't exclusive to the Z890I AORUS Ultra. It needs something more if it's to win the hearts and dollars of ITX fans in the face of strong competition.

The problem with the GIGABYTE Z890I AORUS Ultra is its price. There is strong competition from the MSI MPG Z890I Edge Ti and ASRock Z890I Nova. The ASUS ROG Strix Z890-I Gaming is a step up in price and isn't a direct competitor. The MSI and ASRock boards are often discounted below the $289 price of the Z890I Ultra, and the ASRock in particular is cheaper while offering a superior feature set, including three M.2 slots, a high-end audio chip, and dual Thunderbolt 4 ports. That leaves the GIGABYTE in a tough position.

But pricing is fleeting. The GIGABYTE has better cooling and a generally superior BIOS. As it's a first-generation Z890 board, it's likely to see discounts, particularly during the summer sales season. At its full $289 price, there are better options, but if it drops to $250 or lower, it becomes compelling. It's a competent board ready to host a powerful small-form-factor system.

The GIGABYTE Z890I AORUS Ultra offers a decent core feature set, good performance, excellent cooling, and a lovely design. All it needs is a price drop for it to receive an unequivocal recommendation. I'd expect that to come as the sun slowly sets on LGA 1851.