Bye Bye BSoD

Those who bought Gigabyte’s AORUS Z690i Ultra when it first hit the market saw a large number of blue screens of death thanks to Windows hardware error architecture bugs. These stemmed from an issue with the one and only PCIe 4.0 slot and led to Gigabyte offering owners a refund or exchange for this board, the AORUS Z690i Ultra Plus. While the experience may have left some with a sour taste in their mouths, it doesn’t mean this painting shares similar themes.

This sports Mini-ITX board bakes almost half the thickness of the board’s width, with shielding on the back as well. This seems to do a decent job of keeping the VRMs and other components cool, such as TweakTown reached 5.2 GHz on all cores on the i9-12900K. The cooling wasn’t enough to take this board to the top of the charts, but for such a tiny board it does very well.

If you’re building an SFF system, the AORUS Z690i Ultra Plus is a decent choice, certainly better than the non-Plus version.