The period in which the CES and Computex each year is also the period when AMD and INTEL usually release details about their upcoming releases. This means that many motherboard manufacturers also show the public their new products with increasingly better features.
At CES 2019, announcements were made about the upcoming third-generation Ryzen, but they won't be released anytime soon. But that didn't stop the most well-known motherboard manufacturers from showing off some of their new products. Here are the most interesting ones we saw.
Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme Waterforce: The ultimate motherboard for PC enthusiasts
Gigabyte released this motherboard in the last weeks of 2018, but it also showed off its expensive model at CES. What you see in the picture is a $900 motherboard with a built-in CPU waterblock that also cools the Z390 chipset. Many will wonder why the cost is so high for a motherboard that isn't even an X299 or X399. The reason is the impressive RGB lighting, thunderbolt 3, 10gigabit ethernet capability, dual BIOS, and other features that only flagships have.
Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme Waterforce: The cooling
Just looking at the image above, you can tell that this is a high-end motherboard. The I/O panel has everything you could possibly need, including built-in WiFi, Thunderbolt 3, two ethernet jacks, multiple video and audio outputs, and more. Most importantly, it has RGB lighting!
Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme Waterforce: The chipset
The integrated chipset cooling of this particular model is more for aesthetic reasons than for practical ones. However, below it are PCI EXPRESS M.2. slots. However, these are not the full features of the board. It has 8 fan headers, 4 RGB Lighting headers, and has a built-in temperature sensor. For the most demanding who like to experiment, it also has a dual BIOS function.
Asus ROG Dominus Extreme
This is a MONSTER motherboard. It is intended for servers and is designed for the 28-core XEON processors. It has 12 ram slots, 10 gigabit ethernet and a beautiful metal design. The price has not been published yet, but it will definitely be steep.
ASRock Z390M-STX MXM
This particular motherboard uses a not-so-common form factor called Micro-STX, which requires a special case. The motherboard is compatible with ninth-generation Intel Core i5, i7, i9 processors. The MXM in the motherboard's name is a standard used for laptop graphics. The cards that are compatible so far are the GTX 1060 and GTX 1080.
