If you like pushing your hardware to the limit, Gigabyte has something special for you. The brand’s Z890 Aorus Tachyon Ice motherboard combines on board frequency controls, voltage probing, and an improved layout design for unparalleled signal integrity. Prepare to see plenty of world records get broken via this board.
Kevin Wu has shared a bunch of pictures on Facebook showing the Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Tachyon Ice in all its glory. The board features a a rotated socket, putting the dual memory slots on the upper section instead of the right like standard ATX designs. This approach has the advantage of delivering better signal integrity than quad-slot designs, helping you push higher frequencies.
Additionally, Gigabyte uses shielded memory routing inside a 10-layer PCB to keep signals clean from external interferences. The brand claims support for up to 12,726MT/s memory overclocking, which is enough to sit among the top world records. That said, such speed will demand a lot of work, extreme cooling methods, and most importantly a lot of knowledge and chance in silicon lottery. Regular users can expect up to DDR5-9500 handling, using kits up to 128GB.
This is clearly a board for enthusiasts who want to carve a spot for themselves within the overclocking niche. If you mainly work or game on your machine, a cheaper Z890 Gaming X WiFi at $235 would serve you just as well.
Moving to the CPU, the Tachyon Ice carries 18 SPS 110A power phases for Vcore, one SPS 80A for the iGPU VCCGT, and two SPS 80A for the system agent/memory controller. A large heatsink covers this power delivery system to keep it cool.
On the subject of cooling, while Gigabyte clearly designed this board with LN2 or Helium in mind, nothing is stopping you from daily driving it inside a normal case. The board supports Intel LGA1851 coolers and CPUs, such as the Core Ultra 9 285K.
Moving on to slots and connectivity we get another reminder that this is a special overclocking board. You will find only one Thunderbolt 4, five USB 3.2 Gen 2, two legacy PS2 ports, 5GbE LAN, Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. Internally you still get two PCIe slots – one of which is Gen 5 x16, four SATA ports, and four M.2 slots – one of which is Gen 5.
Gigabyte didn’t share any pricing yet, but you can expect a hefty one, probably north of $600. Again, this is not a regular board for most of us, much as its feature set does appeal to the enthusiast in me.
