White Micro ATX Board Ships With Full Heatsink Coverage

Gigabyte's latest Micro ATX board aims to deliver the feature set of a larger ATX design in a smaller footprint, and its $209 Amazon listing puts it in budget-class pricing. The Z890M Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice is built for Intel's Core Ultra 200S Plus processors and pairs with Micro ATX cases.

The board provides three M.2 sockets and four SATA ports. The primary M.2 socket runs at PCIe 5.0 x4 through the CPU; the other two run at PCIe 4.0 x4 through the chipset, with one accepting modules up to 110mm. NVMe RAID0/1/5/10 is supported. Networking includes 2.5 GbE and Wi-Fi 7, though the review notes the wireless chip is limited to 160 MHz channels.

Two full-length PCIe slots are present: a reinforced CPU-fed slot at PCIe 5.0 x16 and a chipset-fed slot at up to PCIe 4.0 x4. The reviewer cautions that a large graphics card may block the second slot. Memory support is listed up to DDR5-9200 (OC); in testing, a DDR5-8800 kit did not work properly with the board, while a DDR5-8200 kit ran fine, and the reviewer recommends consulting the memory QVL.

Heatsink coverage extends across the lower half of the board, a area many rivals in this price class leave uncovered, and a large heatsink sits on the primary M.2 socket. Two RGB zones, one near the VRMs and one under the chipset heatsink, provide lighting. Six 4-pin fan headers each deliver up to 2A or 24W.

Power delivery uses 15 phases, 12 for Vcore, fed by dual 8-pin EPS connectors and 60A DrMOS parts for 720A total. The review describes this as capable but not robust, and enough for the Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, Core Ultra 5 250K Plus and Core Ultra 9 285K. The reviewer would be wary of heavy overclocking on the 285K or 270K Plus and advises keeping air moving through the case.

Rear I/O includes nine USB ports: four USB 2.0, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A. The only Type-C port is USB4 at 40 Gbps with DisplayPort output, and a DisplayPort 2.1 output sits alongside it. A front-panel HDMI output is also available for secondary displays.

Audio uses a Realtek ALC897 codec, which the reviewer considers fine for most users unless they make music or count themselves audiophiles. On performance, the review calls the board average overall, with strong results in 3DMark and real games. The board also supports AI Perfdrive, which offers customizable BIOS presets for one-click CPU improvements.

Box contents include two white SATA cables, a rubber pad, an extra M.2 thermal pad, an EZ connector for the front panel, and an installation guide. Tool-free touches such as EZ-Latch and EZ-Click M.2 mounting are included, and the review lists the EZ features among the board's strengths.