Rough and cold

A first look at the GIGABYTE Z790 UD AC reveals some seriously sturdy construction, with a metal-reinforced PCIe slot to hold today's larger GPUs. VRMs and MOSFETs are similarly protected, with a decent-sized piece of metal acting as a heat sink for them. The NVMe slot at the top also comes with a heatsink, while the second and M.2 slots for the WiFi card are on their own. The power design is a 16+1+1 hybrid stage, with the VRMs arranged in an 8+8 stage parallel design.

FPS Review tested this with an i7-14700K. And didn't see a single issue when running through our suite of benchmarks. There's a decent spread of features for a $180 motherboard, making the Gigabyte Z790 UD AC an attractive choice as the heart of a mid-range system. The Power Design should also keep the Core i9 happy if you choose to go with that beast.