AORUS X470 Gaming 7 WiFi Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Gigabyte aorus Gaming 7 WiFi AMD X470 motherboard launches today for around £200 at most major retailers. That’s pretty good value for money for a high-end motherboard, with top models from ASUS, MSI, ASRock costing up to £50 more. You certainly get a lot of features for your investment too, and at this price, I can see it being one of the more popular choices for enthusiast gamers.

Overview

The X470 chipset is off to a great start, and the Aorus Gaming 7 is offering some stiff competition. The performance is on par with its X470 rivals and around a similar price, so why choose this one over the others? Firstly, the aesthetics of this motherboard are on point. Sure, it does look like many other Aorus motherboards, even their Intel ones, but that’s no bad thing. With armour on the PCIe slots and DIMM slots, as well as some very chunky VRM cooling, it’s a bit of a beast.

RGB

Speaking of aesthetics, Gigabyte Aorus have been top of their game when it comes to RGB lighting on motherboards. With lighting built into the DIMM slots, cooling shrouds, and even on a customisable strip on the side of the motherboard, it stands out from the crowd. With RGB Fusion software, you can create multi-zone lighting effects, and expand on that with Digital LED and RGB LED strip lighting headers on the motherboard.

Performance

This motherboard is no slouch and lets the new Ryzen 7 2700X hit its performance goals. Of course, since Ryzen 7 introduces new XFR and boost features to hit up to 4.3 GHz, X470 is required to help unlock all those additional features and get the most out of the new CPUs. Either way, it works well and with some excellent gaming performance and some of the fastest multi-tasking and rendering performance of any consumer CPU/Mobo combination, content creators and gamers are going to love what’s on offer here.

Added Value

This is where the Gaming 7 shines the brightest. Obviously, we have support for the new Ryzen CPUs and all their features. However, a 10+2 Phase IR PWM design, as well as MOS Heatsinks and heatpipes mean you’ll have no issue pushing your CPU hard while overclocking. With multi-GPU support, dual Ultra-Fast M.2 w/ NVMe support, and high-speed DDR4 memory support, building an extreme system is going to be a breeze here.

I’m thrilled to see and hear that it features the powerful ALC1220-VB Enhance chipset for audio too. With built-in ESS Sabre DAC and WIMA capacitors, it’ll drive high-end speakers and headsets with high-resolution audio with ease.

Of course, other perks like the armoured slots, built-in rear I/O guard, and a choice of 802.11ac WiFi and GbE networking, onboard power and BIOS controls all help too. I’m already sold on the features, and there’s still more on top of all that.

Should I Buy One

Gigabyte set out to make a high-end gaming motherboard, and they’ve done so with style. This is a fantastic looking motherboard that packs more features than even most enthusiasts are likely to use. Of course, every user and system build is different, so it’s better to have those features and not need them than need them and not have them. The performance is excellent, the price is competitive, and Gigabyte Aorus have a well-established reputation that’s sure to make this one of the most popular X470 solutions on the market.

Pros

• Durable build quality
• Extensive RGB lighting customisation
• Large high-quality heatsinks
• 10+2 Digital IR
• Armoured DIMM and PCIe slots
• Dual M.2 slots with heatsinks
• Great performance
• Easy to use BIOS
• Onboard BIOS debug and controls
• Fantastic onboard audio
• Built-in rear I/O guard

Cons

• None