Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Pro AX Review – 300W for i9-11900K!

1. Introduction2. Gigabyte B560M Aorus Elite3. Gigabyte Z590I Aorus Ultra4. Gigabyte Z590 Aorus Pro AX5. Performance and Testing (CPU)6. Performance and Testing (Gaming)7. Performance and Testing (Power and Heat)8. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

Performance and Testing (Power and Heat)

Power Draw Overview

Running on Auto, we see that Core i9-11900K makes significant demands on whichever motherboard you choose, however when you enable Intel Adaptive Boost the Gigabyte uses significantly more power than the Asus. To our way of thinking, It is little short of outrageous that an eight core CPU might use 300W.

CPU Temperature Overview

Admittedly we are using a 360mm liquid cooler but the fact is the Core i9-11900K runs nice and cool on the Gigabyte when the CPU is drawing over 200W and running at 4.9GHz. Enabling Adaptive Boost and pushing the CPU to 5.1GHz is the point where we cry ‘enough' as we cannot tolerate a continuous CPU temperature north of 90 degrees.

VRM Temperature Overview

It is a similar story with VRM temperatures as they run at pretty much the same level as the CPU, although you have a wider safety margin and could – if you wish – push them past 100 degrees C with some confidence. On the other hand when you run the CPU at 4.9GHz the VRM temperatures are 75 degrees or lower, and that is absolutely fine by us.

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