PC gamers are no strangers to “bling” on their machines, both inside and out. But the newest motherboard and GPU combo will let you completely bling out your desktop PC with some ludicrously extravagant indulgences. In addition to the latest and most powerful components, they’re adorned with “crystalized titanium,” and accents made with actual gold.
The Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Xtreme X Ice is the base of this monument to excess. The motherboard is compatible with Intel 13th- and 14th-gen Core processors, naturally, but that’s just the meat and potatoes here. Above the primary I/O panel is a tiny LCS screen, displaying temperatures and fan speeds by default.
Gigabyte
Gigabyte
Gigabyte
Less useful adornments include covers for pretty much everything on the board, with a pattern of crystallized titanium for you to look at instead of, you know, your components. Don’t worry, the PCIe 5.0 graphics card slot and PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot (with a massive passive cooler included) can be accessed without taking the primary shroud off. The plate holding the CPU in place is gold-colored, though the only part of the motherboard Gigabyte actually claims is “99 percent AU” gold is the tiny triangular serial plaque.
The rest of the spec list is standard for a Z790 chipset, with support for DDR5 RAM at up to 82766MHz, one full-speed x16 PCIe 5.0 motherboard slot, plus a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot for other hardware, three other M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots, loads of USB ports and headers (two USB-C/Thunderbolt ports on the I/O panel, ten USB-A of various speeds), and built-in Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.2.
Gigabyte
Gigabyte
Gigabyte
The matching Aorus Xtreme Ice graphics card has a lot of the same ostentatious touches. It’s an Nvidia RTX 4080 Super, which is indeed the latest but not the greatest in the lineup. Its massive triple-fan cooler is adorned with LEDs, naturally, but also has the same crystallized titanium touches and 99 percent AU gold serial number. The fans use a double ball bearing system for efficiency and the outer fans rotate opposite to the center one, which Gigabyte claims “reduces turbulence and increases air pressure.”
Gigabyte
Gigabyte
Gigabyte
Like the motherboard, the GPU has a tiny built-in LCD, which sits on the top of the shroud to face out of a case with a tempered glass side panel. You can set it to display the GPU temperature, or custom text or a looping GIF for maximum memetic potential.
Both the Aorus Z790 Xtreme X Ice motherboard and the Aorus GeForce RTX 4080 Super Xtreme Ice 16G graphics card are live on the Gigabyte promotional site, but don’t seem to have hit retailers yet. That should give you time to pawn most of your possessions and/or limbs, in preparation for the inevitably high (and as yet unrevealed) price tags.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.