GIGABYTE Intros Z890 AORUS Elite WiFi7 Plus and Z890 Eagle WiFi7 Plus Motherboards

GIGABYTE over the weekend introduced the Z890 AORUS Elite WiFi7 Plus and Z890 Eagle WiFi7 Plus motherboards. The two boards are timed to launch alongside Intel’s new Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and Core Ultra 7 270K Plus “Arrow Lake-S” processors later this month, and come with out-of-the-box support for the new chips. Both boards come with GIGABYTE’s Ultra Turbo Mode automated boost frequency and voltage offsets that are applied on top of Intel 200S Boost, on Core Ultra Series 2 “K” and “KF” unlocked processors. An interesting cost-cutting measure with both these boards is that they lack a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports normally expected of Z890 motherboards, and instead wire out just a single 40 Gbps USB4 port.

The Z890 AORUS Elite WiFi7 Plus is the more premium model among the two, offering a 16+1+2 phase CPU VRM with 60 A DrMOS; while the Z890 Eagle WiFi7 Plus offers a 14+1+2 phase VRM. The AORUS Elite WiFi7 Plus offers 5 GbE wired LAN using a Realtek-sourced controller, while the Eagle WiFi7 offers a 2.5 GbE from a Realtek controller. Both boards offer Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 using Intel WLAN modules, with the AORUS Elite WiFi7 Plus offering a 320 MHz Intel BE200NGW, while the Eagle WiFi 7 Plus offers a 160 MHz Intel BE202 (BE200NGW-M). Both boards offer a fairly decent onboard audio solution using a Realtek ALC1220 HDA codec and WIMA capacitors. Also, common to both boards are convenient SMD buttons on the rear I/O shields for power, reset, clear CMOS, and USB BIOS flashback. Both boards are expected to be priced around the $250-mark.