AORUS has taken an interesting approach with this motherboard. They’ve pushed some of the savings to the consumer by using a cheaper brown PCB design, which doesn’t look great if I’m honest. There’s no armor on the DIMM slots, and they’ve just generally trimmed the fat here and there. That being said, there’s a lot of nice stuff still on this board, and overall, it does look pretty decent.
With no overclocking, the VRM and power delivery doesn’t need to be too crazy. However, there’s still a robust looking setup here, with a decent cooling solution too. When it comes to ensuring maximum CPU performance 24/7, it looks more than up to the job. Meanwhile, a shroud on the rear I/O keeps things looking neat and tidy.
There’s a single 8-pin CPU power connector, more than enough for any supported CPU.
There are three M.2 mounts on this motherboard, which is awesome for a budget model. Only the top one comes with a heatsink though, but it that improves the performance of your main drive, I call that a bonus.
The same is true with the PCIe slots. There are three full-size ones, but only the top one has armor. For a single GPU system, this makes sense. Of course, that leaves plenty of room for other add-in cards. With riser cables, you could easily build a five GPU mining rig too.
Another welcome addition, some decent audio hardware. It’s mounted on a separate trace on the motherboard, and there are even a few gold caps there too; I was expecting less if I’m honest.
Connectivity looks decent too, with six SATA ports covering the rest of your storage needs.
The DIMMs are pretty basic, but the chipset still support high-speed DDR4 memory, so it’s a purely aesthetic change.
Finally, the rear I/O is pretty capable too. There’s USB 3.1 and 3.0 ports, as well as four USB 2.0 ports. Dual display outputs thanks to DVI and HDMI, and there are the usual audio jacks too. The only thing I can see missing is an optical port, but that’s no deal breaker for most.
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