GIGABYTE ATX DDR5 Z790 Eagle Ax

Hello, Im Michael, and Im reviewing the Gigabyte Z790 Eagle AX.First and foremost. Im a brand loyalist and have never built a computer until recently.Im going to be using MOBO which stands for Motherboard from here on out.I was accustomed to using an Alienware 15R2 for almost 10 years. Thats a laptop. Which I worked and worked on squeezing as much as I could out of it. It is an amazing laptop from 2015 thats amazing for mobile use, but for 2024 gaming use, it just didnt cut it anymore.I upgraded my cousins old EVGA 2080 GPU to a GIGABYTE 4070 ti super first. Because I thought his old EVGA board and PSU was being GPU throttled. Instead of upgrading the board, cpu, thermal paste, cpu cooler, psu, and the case. I put in the GIGABYTE 4070 TI Super before anything else to make sure. The GIGABYTE gpu performed excellent in his build. But, unfortunately his CPU couldnt keep up with the demand. Causing alot of stuttering issues. The GIGABYTE 4070 TI Super performed beautifully. Dont get me wrong. This was a CPU issue. Not a Gigabyte issue.So. I did my own research. I did my own data testing and analysis to find the best mid range board. I was shocked that EVGA doesnt make GPU's or MOBO's anymore. Such good quality stuff. Why did they stop? I dont have that answer for you.If EVGA made motherboards and GPU's I wouldnt be wasting my time with this review.Anyways. The GIGABYTE Z790 Eagle AX is exactly what I bought. DDR5. LGA 1700 Socket, NVME Gen4, Built in Wifi 6, and bluetooth.I chose GIGABYTE because the GIGABYTE EAGLE WINDFORCE 4070 TI Super "whatever," performed with no issues whatsover.This board. Is not perfect when it comes to OC/BIOS configs. I have tested and pushed the limits. And it has forgiven me everytime. That is something new. The evga MBO when I have OC or overclocked the memory or the cpu it has completely died. And I had to reset everything. This BIOS is completely forgiving for new PC builders.My current build is the 4000D Corsair Case with 2 included fans. Corsair 650x 650w PSU, GIGABYTE Z790 Eagle AX MOBO, Intel i7 14700K CPU, Thermalright Peerless Assassin CPU cooler, Crucial 64gb DDR5 RAM, Crucial P3 1TB NVME, Samsung 950 500GB NVME, Samsung 850 500GB SSD, and a Seagate 2TB HDD.This board supports everything. I called my PC "Frankenstein" because its built with parts from other computers. Thats what someone who knows what their doing does. NVME. SATA SSD, SATA HDD. It still supports older hardware.And it does it without flaw with an undervolt and an OC on the CPU.One thing I will tell you. DO NOT TRUST THE GIGABYTE SOFTWARE. IT WILL NOT UPDATE YOUR BIOS. IT WILL NOT INSTALL EVERYTHING FROM THE GIGABYTE SITE THAT YOU NEED.With that being said. I built my cousin a brand new computer.Same Corsair 4000D case, Same GIGABYTE Z790 Eagle Ax MOBO, Same Intel 14700K CPU, Same Thermalright Peerless Assassin, Same Crucial 64GB DDR5.Upgraded to a Corsair RM1000x, in case he wants to install an 6090, Upgraded the NVME to a Crucial T500. And of course. Put his old 4070 TI Super in his new computer.The results speak for themselves. He said "He didnt know that computers were this good."

My motherboard was defective right out of the box, but it took too long for me to collect the rest of the parts for my build and I didn’t discover the defect until after the return window had expired so now my only option is to deal with gigabyte directly. Their customer service is useless, and will not replace the motherboard with a new one so I will be stuck with a refurbished board for the price of a new one . I feel abandoned by the 30 day return policy and for parts like these it needs to be longer.

I had to rebuild my 2-year old computer. It was from a major retailer of computers. The fans on the power supply got loud and then weren't working correctly so the power supply started to overheat. It was past the 1-year warranty and the customer support from where I bought it from was horrible. Motherboard and some components had non-standard connections that were proprietary to the retailer. I rebuilt with a new case, mobo, power supply, CPU cooler, and fans. Pulled the CPU, video card and storage drives out of the old computer. This mobo seems to work just fine. Haven't had any issues with it and it booted up on the first try. It had been around 16 years since I build a computer like this. Happy with it. One thing I had to correct was the Gigabyte Control Center software made the fans on my video card act strangely and I had to figure that out and change the fan settings. Not sure why, but only one of the fans would spin and it would spin at full speed while the other two fans were stopped and not spinning at all. It was quite loud. I changed the settings in the Gigabyte Control Center so all three fans on the video card would all spin at the same time.

I paired this board with a i5 14600KF and some 6400 DDR5 from Corsair. Enabling any kind of overlock including XMP on the DIMMs causes constant freezing and crashing. Hopefully this will get resolved in future BIOS releases.Otherwise this board is a good middle of the road compromise.

This mobo had all the features I needed and got me within budget for the PC build. I paired it with an Intel® Core™ i7-14700KF - Unlocked. The BIOS is focused on performance tuning for both CPU and fan speeds. The GCC application integration is also a nice feature to have with Windows. Beware that you need a TPM chip that fits in order to install Windows 11. Be careful to match the pins of the TPM header for the right one because there are two different kinds for Gigabyte. The one that finally worked was "TPM2.0 Module TPM SPI 12Pin Module with Infineon SLB 9670 for Gigabyte Motherboard" for $20. I have been running this for three weeks, and I am so far very happy.