GIGABYTE X299 AORUS Gaming 9 Motherboard Review

Circuit Analysis

The X299 Aorus Gaming 9 really is quite beautiful.

The motherboard provides eight true phases for the CPU VCore or Input voltage of the CPU. There are other rails as well such as VCCSA. It uses an Infineon digital PWM, the IR35201, in 8+0 phase mode. Each phase uses an IR3556, 50A 2nd generation PowIRstage fully integrated power stage from Infineon.

The VRM also uses 70-76A high current Cooper Bussmann power inductors and 10K FP caps. The VRM required for the CPU's VCore or iVR input voltage at overclocked levels is huge, and this level of quality is excellent. A few of Infineon's new IR35204 3+1 phase PWM controllers are used to control the secondary rail VRMs (like VCCSA and IO), main DDR VRM, and DDR VPP VRM. The secondary rails use IR3553 40A integrated PowIRstage power stages; they are overkill for this job, so they should operate well.

Here we have both main memory VRMs using two IR3553 PowIRstages and an IR35204 each.