Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Motherboard Audio Review

[bboris77]

Sure.

Awesome. I’ve wondering for a while whether these ports leak less video card/ psu noise down the common ground. Keep in mind, you can only notice this if there is a ground loop present. For example if your DAC, amp or studio monitors use a 3 prong power cord. For me, the worst culprit was my GTX 980 video card. Since I changed to GTX 1660 Super, the noise has diminished to almost imperceptible but it is still there if I don’t break the ground loop.

 

[Tks]

Awesome. I’ve wondering for a while whether these ports leak less video card/ psu noise down the common ground. Keep in mind, you can only notice this if there is a ground loop present. For example if your DAC, amp or studio monitors use a 3 prong power cord. For me, the worst culprit was my GTX 980 video card. Since I changed to GTX 1660 Super, the noise has diminished to almost imperceptible but it is still there if I don’t break the ground loop.

Speaking of which, mine started dying recently, and now I'm GPU-less (trying my best to holdout till the 3080Ti arrives) (though a 1080Ti is present in the other computer).

Started having hard-locking of the system during any considerable load (or even massive photoshop real-time processing).

 

[bboris77]

The main reason why I have switched to PS4 Pro for gaming is the fact that only top of the line video cards can play anything at 4K with 60fps consistently. And in my experience, most top of the line video cards produce coil whine and leak a ton of it down the common ground. Plus they cost 1k in Canada.

Speaking of which, mine started dying recently, and now I'm GPU-less (trying my best to holdout till the 3080Ti arrives) (though a 1080Ti is present in the other computer).

Started having hard-locking of the system during any considerable load (or even massive photoshop real-time processing).

 

[Tks]

Meh, ima gamer at heart. But no so much anymore in practice mainly Used for CUDA accelerated tasks. But now that I don’t have one, starting to miss gaming more. Would like to play some upcoming games I’ve waited for a while.

And I agree, Nvidia went insane and the customers along with them buying into these insane RTX line pricing numbers.

 

[bboris77]

Meh, ima gamer at heart. But no so much anymore in practice mainly Used for CUDA accelerated tasks. But now that I don’t have one, starting to miss gaming more. Would like to play some upcoming games I’ve waited for a while.

And I agree, Nvidia went insane and the customers along with them buying into these insane RTX line pricing numbers.

I know, it is nuts that one has to spend 3 times the cost of a PS4 Pro or XBox One X for a graphics card that runs things acceptably at 4K.
But what really annoys me is that the video card manufacturers just do not seem to give a crap about coil whine that their cards produce or the interference that they dump down the common ground. At least PS4 Pro uses a 2-prong cord which eliminates the latter problem. However, most PS4 Pro consoles, including my own, have a very pronounced coil whine emanating from the unit itself that is easily audible in menus where the frame rate is uncapped (for some reason). I had to put mine into a ventilated closet just so that the coil whine and fan noise would not bother me. With PCs, you can control the fan noise easily, you can cap that frame rates which helps the coil whine, but electric interference via common ground is still an issue.

 

[Zerohour]

78ohm output impedance, sounds about right. I measured around 80ohm out of my own Asus B350 Prime Plus (they only advertise the bare minimum of shielding, separate left/right PCB layers and Japanese capacitors, so wasn't expecting much).

The sad thing is that the DAC is Realtek ALC887 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC but there's only 1 audio out. Back in the old Pentium days, even a mid-range mobo had 5 channel output for a surround speaker system.

 

[CJ Miller]

Okay I didn't expect it to be this bad. Figured they pull into the lower green rating for sinbad. Still this product never had a chance compared to the thrifty stand alone dads and amps.

 

[Veri]

Honestly, hook it up to Magni heresy or Atom and you have a perfectly "suitable" output+amplifier combo for $100. Definitely "OK".

 

[pozz]

Okay I didn't expect it to be this bad. Figured they pull into the lower green rating for sinbad. Still this product never had a chance compared to the thrifty stand alone dads and amps.

Definitely. Thrifty dads have no equal. Not even for Sinbad.

 

[dmac6419]

Thank you so much for reviewing this board! 7mW of whopping power with 78ohm output impedance WOW is all i have to say.

78X8=624 ohms

Is their a headphone we can recommend on this board with this level of performance?

$290 board performing like this i wonder how $50 boards would fair lol perhaps 1mW of power?

Maybe ASUS will see this and up their game.

 

[Timbo2]

The main reason why I have switched to PS4 Pro for gaming is the fact that only top of the line video cards can play anything at 4K with 60fps consistently. And in my experience, most top of the line video cards produce coil whine and leak a ton of it down the common ground. Plus they cost 1k in Canada.

I have a GTX1080 that had a significant coil whine under load over 75% or so. I had to replace the the power supply and did so with a Seasonic Prime 1000 and the coil whine almost completely disappeared. I was very pleasantly surprised.

 

[wwenze]

I'm thinking those captions are reversed? Unless SpeedStep is working in reverse on your system.

The captions are correct.

 

[Palladium]

Another quality work from Amir!

That said, I'll stick with my $70 Topping D10. As far as I'm concerned $200+ mobos are all overpriced and the money is pretty much better spent elsewhere on the PC.

 

[Dana reed]

Thank you so much for reviewing this board! 7mW of whopping power with 78ohm output impedance WOW is all i have to say.

78X8=624 ohms

Is their a headphone we can recommend on this board with this level of performance?

$290 board performing like this i wonder how $50 boards would fair lol perhaps 1mW of power?

I guess you gotta go with the Beyer T1 to get impedance near that high. probably better off just running the line out into an Atom or a Magni though.

 

[ShiZo]

I know, it is nuts that one has to spend 3 times the cost of a PS4 Pro or XBox One X for a graphics card that runs things acceptably at 4K.
But what really annoys me is that the video card manufacturers just do not seem to give a crap about coil whine that their cards produce or the interference that they dump down the common ground. At least PS4 Pro uses a 2-prong cord which eliminates the latter problem. However, most PS4 Pro consoles, including my own, have a very pronounced coil whine emanating from the unit itself that is easily audible in menus where the frame rate is uncapped (for some reason). I had to put mine into a ventilated closet just so that the coil whine and fan noise would not bother me. With PCs, you can control the fan noise easily, you can cap that frame rates which helps the coil whine, but electric interference via common ground is still an issue.

totally, my last 5 cards I bought for myself and others whine...

 

[bboris77]

totally, my last 5 cards I bought for myself and others whine...

I feel so lucky now that I got a whine-free GTX 1660 Super! Mine is Asus DUAL-GTX1660S-O6G-EVO. Maybe it is just luck of the draw, but it also could be that this card only uses one eight pin power connector and is generally not a power-hungry beast.

 

[ShiZo]

Yeah, all mine have been power hungry monsters.

I thought I got unlucky having a small amount of coil whine but I build systems for other people and I had to start just telling them it's normal. You can go through 3 rma's and still have whine

 

[zepplock]

I guess you gotta go with the Beyer T1 to get impedance near that high. probably better off just running the line out into an Atom or a Magni though.

DT990 600ohm

 

[Dana reed]

DT990 600ohm

Yeah I guess I used to have a DT880 600 Ohm, but I sold it when I got the T1.2. I liked having the ability to have a detachable cable, and could run a 4 pin XLR

 

[zepplock]

Yeah I guess I used to have a DT880 600 Ohm, but I sold it when I got the T1.2. I liked having the ability to have a detachable cable, and could run a 4 pin XLR

Offtopic: I modded mine with mini-xlr.