GIGABYTE X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 Motherboard Review

TweakTown's Rating: 96%

The Bottom Line

The GIGABYTE X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 combines a solid core feature set and value for money that make it tough to beat.

Pros

• + Affordability
• + Three PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots
• + 12 rear USB ports
• + Primary SSD heat sink

Cons

• - Limited expansion slots

Should you buy it?

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

As you may have noted, X870E motherboards are expensive. The price tags of many premium options have undoubtedly raised the eyebrows of more than a few potential buyers. If you fall into that category, you'll want to consider motherboards with the non-extreme X870 chipset.

What's the difference between X870E and X870, you might ask? Spec-wise, they are outwardly similar. Both chipsets include mandatory USB4, PCIe 5.0 graphics, and NVMe SSDs. The key difference is that X870E features dual Promontory 21 chips, which provide more PCIe lanes for manufacturers to allocate towards things like faster LAN and USB controllers, more M.2 slots, or more expansion slots. X870 motherboards include only one.

That extra chip, extra PCIe lanes, and controllers are what make X870E expensive. If you're a user with a commonly configured PC, let's say with a single graphics card and a couple of SSDs, an X870 motherboard is a perfectly capable solution. That's where a motherboard like the GIGABYTE X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 comes in.

One could never refer to a $289 motherboard as being no-frills. Labeling it as that would be doing the AORUS Elite WiFi7 a disservice. It still has a set of features that will remain up-to-date for at least another couple of years, but price-wise, it sits at a point where it could be considered lower mid-range.

The GIGABYTE X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 - as the name suggests - is part of GIGABYTE's AORUS family, meaning it's a gaming-themed board. It sits in the middle of the AORUS product stack. GIGABYTE's models start at $219 for the X870 Gaming WiFi6 and top out at $499 for the X870E AORUS Master, so the AORUS Elite WiFi7 is actually one of the more affordable models in the AORUS range.

We have the black version in for review. If you prefer a white option, GIGABYTE offers the X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 ICE. Personally, I believe that version looks stunning, but which one you choose will depend on your other components and case.

The AORUS Elite WiFi7 is a well-equipped board with a competitive feature set in its price range. It's a socket AM5 board with four DDR5 slots, a capable VRM solution, three PCIe x16 expansion slots, and four M.2 slots - three of which support PCIe 5.0. In addition, you get dual USB4 and Wi-Fi 7. Like most X870 boards, the AORUS Elite WiFi7 incorporates a host of ease-of-use features designed to make system building and upgrading a painless experience.

The GIGABYTE X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 carries a recommended retail price of $289.

GIGABYTE X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 Motherboard

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$289.99	$289.99	-	-	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 10/4/2024 at 2:49 am CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission from any sales.

Packaging, Accessories, and Overview

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The GIGABYTE X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 box prominently features the AORUS eagle. I've never quite worked out if the bottom part of it represents a claw or some kind of tough fist pose. Perhaps it's both? But I digress.

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The rear of the box shows off the board's key features, along with a comprehensive specification rundown, a look at the rear I/O, and some QR codes for further information.

The X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 ships with a basic set of accessories. It includes setup and installation guides, two SATA cables, an AORUS case badge, a front panel header connector that GIGABYTE refers to as the Q Connector, and the Wi-Fi antenna. There's no manual or flash drive with software or drivers, so you'll have to visit the GIGABYTE website to grab those.

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The Wi-Fi antenna is thin and small, so you'll need some sticky tape under its base if you want it to sit upright. What's impressive is its single plug installation option, which is a nice touch and quite user-friendly.

Motherboard Overview

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The GIGABYTE X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 is an ATX offering with a good-looking all-black design with hints of grey. There's a small bank of RGB LEDs underneath the chipset heatsink. The days of RGB overload are long gone. However, if you're a fan of RGB, there are three ARGB headers and a single RGB header, so you're all set to choose colors that suit your build.

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The board supports up to eight fan headers, three of which are designated as capable of powering water pumps. There are headers supporting up to four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 5Gbps ports, and a single Type-C 20Gbps port. As someone who uses a Type-C external SSD to shuffle files between machines, I appreciate the latter.

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Four DIMM slots support speeds of up to DDR5-8000+ in a dual-channel single-rank configuration, the same as the X670 AORUS Elite AX. For the time being, a good set of DDR5-6000 or 6400 is still what AMD recommends in order to keep the memory and memory controller in a 1:1 ratio, and it's unlikely many people will buy this board and run DDR5-8000+ anyway. In total, the board will support up to 256GB of memory.

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The X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 comes with three physical x16 expansion slots. The topmost one supports PCIe 5.0 x16, the second runs at PCIe 4.0 x4, and the bottom one supports PCIe 3.0. It's an x2 link only.

Storage-wise, the X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 includes four SATA ports and four M.2 slots, three of which support PCIe 5.0 drives. The other supports PCIe 4.0. Note that the second and third PCIe 5.0 slots share bandwidth with the primary X16 slot. So, populating either of these will reduce the link width of the x16 slot to x8.

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The four M.2 slots all feature heatsinks. The primary slot has its own, while the other three share a single plate. Both are easy to remove and reattach. GIGABYTE deserves praise for the chunky primary M.2 heatsink included with the X870 AORUS Elite. It features a large surface area that will really benefit owners of high-performance PCIe 5.0 drives.

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The X870 AORUS Elite's VRM is decent for a board in this price range. It's a 16+2+2 phase design with 60A stages. Note that GIGABYTE uses a parallel 8+8 design. While on paper, it doesn't appear as capable as a more expensive board with a gazillion 110A stages; it's still well above the requirements for running an overclocked Ryzen 9 9950X.

The VRM heatsinks are also capable, though sadly, they don't incorporate the excellent finned heatsinks present on GIGABYTE's more expensive boards. The X870 AORUS Elite had no temperature issue with our Ryzen 9 9950X under sustained all-core loads.

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GIGABYTE has equipped the X870E AORUS Elite WiFi7 with a solid set of ports. If there's an omission to be noted, it's the lack of a CMOS clear button, though it does include a BIOS flashback function, which - unless you have a currently available AM5 CPU - will be necessary for installing a future-generation CPU or X3D model.

The USB complement is about as good as can be expected for an X870 board. The dual Type-C USB4 ports are mandatory. These are joined by two 10Gbps ports, four 5GBps ports and four USB 2.0 ports.

A Realtek 8125 controller controls the single 2.5G LAN port. A MediaTek MT7925 controller provides Wi-Fi 7, but that's only for the 1.0 version of the board. The 1.1 version includes Realtek RTL8922AE. Both controllers support Bluetooth 5.4 and 160MHz connections, not 320MHz.

Next are the audio ports, which consist of 3.5mm line-in and line-out ports and S/PDIF. A Realtek ALC1220 codec drives these. This chip is starting to age, but it's not unexpected in this price range.

Finally, there's a single HDMI 2.1 port, which, combined with the DP-alt mode supported by the USB4 ports, gives multi-monitor support when used with a supporting processor.

UEFI, Software and Test System

UEFI

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GIGABYTE's Aorus-themed BIOSes haven't changed much in recent times, so their layout will remain familiar to anyone who's owned a GIGABYTE board in recent years. It features an attractive color scheme, and most options are easy to find.

It was also refreshing to find that boot times were as fast as could be expected in the platform's early days. The first boot or two always take longer due to memory training, but that's a one-and-done thing, and it's expected behavior.

Test System

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X - Buy from Amazon
• GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X - Buy from Amazon
• RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB 2x16GB DDR5-6000 CL30 - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux - Buy from Amazon
• OS Storage: Teamgroup T-Force Z540 2TB - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex Titanium 850W - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro - Buy from Amazon

Benchmarks - Rendering and Encoding

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench 2024 is the latest version of Maxon's reliable and frequently used benchmark that measures single and multi-threaded performance. Note that all our benchmark testing used the latest available Windows updates and a BIOS that includes AGESA 1.2.0.2, which features improved inter-core latency for AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors.

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The X870 AORUS Elite WiFI7 performed as expected, with a result of 2,269 in the nT test and 138 in the 1T test.

Blender

A rendering application like Blender is just one of many reasons a user will consider a high-core-count CPU like a Ryzen 9 9950X. We use the Whitelands demo file and record how long it takes to render the image.

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The AORUS returned the slowest result, but a difference of a few seconds over seven minutes isn't problematic.

Handbrake

Handbrake is a simple-to-use video encoding and transcoding application. Here, we convert a 4K movie trailer to 1080p. The results below show the average FPS, where a higher result means the task will take less time to complete.

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The AORUS falls in the middle of the tested boards.

Benchmarks - File Compression and Memory latency

7Zip

7Zip is a commonly used free file compression and decompression app. It's very sensitive to changes in memory speed and latency and scales with the number of CPU threads.

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The GIGABYTE is slightly off the lead here. 7zip is sensitive to memory performance, so this could result from some slightly looser memory sub-timings.

AIDA64 Memory Latency

Memory latency is an area that currently favors Intel. AMD's chiplet architecture and the Infinity Fabric link inevitably add some latency compared to Intel's monolithic chips. The real-world benefits aren't that important, though.

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There's little difference here between the tested boards.

Benchmarks - PCMark and 3DMark

PCMark 10 Productivity

We'd love to use our PCs purely for leisure, but some of us have to work, too! The PCMark 10 productivity test performs a series of tests using office productivity applications.

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Here, the AORUS pulls out a small lead. It's not a big one, but a win is a win.

3DMark Storage

UL's newest 3DMark SSD Gaming Test is the most comprehensive SSD gaming test ever devised. It is superior to testing against games themselves because, as a trace, it is much more consistent than variations that will occur between runs of the actual game. This test is the same as running the actual game without the inconsistencies inherent in application testing.

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The X670E Taichi is ahead in this test. Perhaps X870 BIOSes have focused on other areas, with some optimization still to come.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme

Time Spy Extreme is losing favor as a graphics benchmark in favor of Speed Way and Steel Nomad, but its CPU test is still a good measure of multi-core performance.

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This is a good result for the X870 Elite WiFi7, even if the differences are minor.

Benchmarks - Gaming

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is brutal on graphics cards, but when things like ray tracing are removed, it becomes more sensitive to CPU and memory performance differences.

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The RTX 4070 Ti Super, as used in our test system, is not the best for highlighting gaming performance differences under GPU-limited scenarios, so the results between the tested boards are pretty close.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn can achieve high frame rates with powerful graphics cards when using the' favor performance' preset.

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The AORUS was a frame ahead in Cyberpunk 2077 and earned a win here, too.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

Metro Exodus received an update that added improved DLSS support, enhanced ray tracing features, and variable rate shading, among other things. Still, with a powerful graphics card, it is affected by CPU and memory performance at 1080p, though less so with a card like the RTX 4070 Ti Super.

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Metro makes it three from three in the gaming tests. The differences are minor, but it's still a feather in the AORUS Elite WiFi7's cap to top the charts in all three gaming tests and 3DMark Time Spy Extreme as well.

VRM and SSD Temperatures

These tests are performed to show off the differences between each motherboard's cooling assemblies. In the case of VRM testing, each board is subjected to a 20-minute Cinebench loop, while the SSD test records the peak temperature recorded during the lengthy 3DMark Storage test.

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The GIGABYTE has a capable VRM heatsink assembly. The MSI is a good few degrees higher, and that board costs over $200 more than the AORUS.

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This test shows the quality and large surface area of the AORUS Elite WiFI7's primary SSD heatsink. As one of the more affordable X870 boards, GIGABYTE could have shaved a buck or two off the board's production cost by opting for a less capable primary heatsink design, but it didn't, and that's great to see.

Final Thoughts

GIGABYTE has set an aggressive price for the X870 Elite WiFi7. It's the kind of board that will suit users looking for a strong core feature set. It allows you to save a bit of money and divert it towards something like a faster GPU or CPU, which is where the real performance gains come from.

Its highlights include Wi-Fi 7, a strong USB complement including USB4, a capable VRM, a large SSD heatsink, and strong performance. Add to that a well-designed BIOS and an attractive, understated aesthetic, and there's little to complain about.

The only real compromise is the use of the X870 chipset. You'll have to compromise a little if you want to include a full stack of SSDs and expansion cards. That's in no way an issue exclusive to GIGABYTE. In fact, if you want greater expansion potential, GIGABYTE offers an X870E version for $319.

If you're looking for a board to power your system into 2025 and beyond, the GIGABYTE X870 AORUS Elite WiFi7 is an excellent choice. Ask yourself if you really need to pay more?