Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 Z370 Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

Straight away the Gaming 7 makes a striking first impression. I’ll be damned if this isn’t one of the best-looking motherboards on the market today! The black and chrome finish looks impressive, but take note that any of the white parts on the shrouds, heat sinks, various slots are packing a huge amount of RGB lights, so you can really make this motherboard any colour you desire.

Powerful Overclocking

The VRM cooling hardware is no joke here either, with a good chunk of metal on two sides of the CPU to keep the power delivery hardware nice and cool. If you plan on heavily overclocking your CPU and running it hard for extended periods, this is what you want to see. I also love how it overlaps into the rear I/O guard, giving it a multi-level armoured look.

Of course, the socket is tweaked now too, allowing support of the 8th Gen CPUs, allowing you to get your 6-core action going.

On-board Controls

There are four DDR4 slots here, each decorated with durable armour to prevent the board from flexing, and RGB LED light strips for added customisation. If that wasn’t enough, there’s also customisable engraved plastic strip on the right edge, which lights up with RGB too. My favourite feature though is the inclusion of on-board power and overclocking controls; perfect for test bench use.

Connectivity is excellent, with plenty of storage, USB 3.0, 2.0, and Type-C front panel connectors, as well as loads of fan headers for all your cooling needs.

This connectivity continues along the bottom row, where you’ll also find RGBW connections, as well as a BIOS Debug LED.

Armoured PCIe

Building a multi-GPU system is no issue either, with three full-size and armoured PCIe lanes. There are three 1x lanes too for additional devices. Extreme gaming rigs, additional PCIe storage devices, or even a mining rig, all should be easy work for this motherboard. Add to that the triple M.2 drive mounts, and you’re well on your way to the extreme system of your dreams.

High-end audio is more common on motherboards these days, but the Gaming 7 is a cut above most motherboards. It features the fantastic ALC1220 chipset, with ESS SABRE DAC, and WIMA capacitors for clear, powerful, and accurate sound. Of course, with USB DAC-UP 2, and SoundBlasterX 720, you also get plenty of audio customisation and expansion options too.

Rear I/O

Finally, the rear I/O which does seem to lack a lot of USB ports, but does make up for it with dual display outputs (gold-plated ones at that), dual LAN, and good quality audio outputs.