AORUS Z690 Xtreme WaterForce and AORUS Z690 Xtreme are currently the most sought-after flagship motherboards. This has been specifically designed and fabricated for Alder Lake.
It is also one of the most expensive flagship motherboards for the CPUs of the series LGA1700 from Gigabyte.
Another cool feature about the motherboard is that it comes equipped with a liquid cooling monoblock.
This monoblock covers both the CPU socket and the power section of the AORUS Z690 Xtreme WaterForce. Cooling down the components producing heat becomes easy now.
This Core i9-12900K CPU has the power to boost itself up to 241 watts. This is before it has been overclocked.
Similarities between the AORUS Z690 Xtreme and the AORUS Z690 Xtreme WaterForce.
If we go into more detail, we will notice that the AORUS Z690 Xtreme and the AORUS Z690 Xtreme WaterForce have a few similarities.
The motherboards in both the models have an exact similar circuit. The power delivery in both of them is 20 + 1 + 2 VRMs and comes with dual power connectors of 8 pins.
Check out the new flagship from Gigabyte.Just as the air-cooled variant, the AORUS Z690 Xtreme WaterForce also has a special dedicated cover for memory slots. Some people might feel that this cover reduces the airflow around the heatsinks of the memory.
This is true that the airflow around the heatsinks might get reduced, but Gigabyte assures that this flagship motherboard will be providing the support of overclocked DDR5memory.
This support can go up to 6600 MT per second with the help of the XML 3.0 profiles.
Both the AORUS Z690 Xtreme and the AORUS Z690 Xtreme WaterForce come with two PCIe Gen 5 slots and another Gen 3 slot along with it. The width is around 16 lanes for the board.
However, if we look at the Gen 5 slot, it will be operating at a width of x8 only if the primary slot is not accessible or populated.
The motherboards have a total of four M.2 slots. Each of these slots will have a support of up to connectivity of x4 PCIe Gen4. Apart from this, both the AORUS Z690 Xtreme and the AORUS Z690 Xtreme WaterForce will offer a 10 Gbit and a 2.3 Gbit network of NIC.
The wireless card placed over here is the Intel AX210, and it will have the added support of WiFi6E.
Several photos of the motherboard have landed on the internet, and they are really impressive to look at. There is also news that the AORUS Z690 Xtreme WaterForce will have only 200 pieces manufactured for the time being.
This also states that these flagship motherboards will be pinching a bit hard on the pockets of those planning to purchase them.
An Australian retailer has already prebooked many of these motherboards at 300 AUD. This sums up to 2191 US Dollars or 1911 EUR. The AORUS Z690 Xtreme and the AORUS Z690 Xtreme WaterForce will indeed be available in limited stocks.
However, we have no idea as to why they are going to be this expensive.
We hope that once the motherboards start getting manufactured in big numbers, the price goes down.
