Gigabyte to bundle a hand-picked Core i9-9900K with an Aorus motherboard for $1,600

Remember that $900 motherboard from Gigabyte we told you about last December? Well, starting soon you'll have the option of buying it with a binned Core i9-9900K processor (which is the best CPU for gaming) for an eye-popping $1,600, with a guaranteed overclock of 5.1GHz.

The motherboard is a Z390 Aorus Xtreme Waterforce 5G. It's every bit a high end board, with a built-in, all-in-one monoblock to incorporate into your liquid cooling loop and all kinds of premium amenities.

For the upcoming bundle, Gigabyte is sorting through and stress testing Core i9-9900K processors based on their ability to overclock. Only the ones that can maintain a stable 5.1GHz on all cores make the cut and are included in the bundle.

Most users who buy the bundle should be able to hit that speed out of the box, unless there is a problem elsewhere in their system (RAM, cooling, and so forth). To make things as easy as possible, Gigabyte sets the appropriate parameters in the BIOS before shipping.

"The BIOS has also been pretuned so that users won’t have to configure the settings to avoid complications and confusion for hitting all cores at 5.1GHz and higher while overclocking. Additionally, Gigabyte engineers have already stress tested these motherboards at higher loads compared to that of standard configurations to ensure the reliability of these boards so that users can enjoy extreme performance with all cores at 5.1GHz or higher and excellent stability," Gigabytes says.

Those settings consist of the following:

• CPU multiplier: 51
• BCLK: 100
• CPU vCore: Auto
• Loadline Calibration: Auto
• XMP: Disable

This takes some of the fun out of overclocking, though if all you are interested in is the end result, Gigabyte will happily oblige. For a hefty price, of course.

The company has not confirmed availability in the US for this latest bid in the best gaming motherboard war, but did share the MSRP with our friends at TomsHardware.