Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 Z370 Motherboard Review

Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 When it comes to picking a feature-packed gaming motherboard, the AORUS Gaming range is usually a great place to start. Obviously, the range usually offers up the 3, 5, 7 and the 9, with each offering more features than the last. The Gaming 7 is the perfect blend of high-end features that appeal to high-end consumers, without going to the more extreme Gaming 9 that often a popular choice for extreme overclockers. Equipped with support for the latest 8th Gen CPUs, the Gaming 7 delivers a huge range of features. You'll find high-end audio, extensive RGB lighting, robust connectivity and networking, and so much more. Of course, you'll also get impressive connectivity thanks to the triple M.2 mounts, Optane support, and Thunderbolt. If that wasn't enough, premium overclocking components ensure stable performance for overclocking. Features Supports 8th Gen Intel® Core™ Processors Dual Channel Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 4 DIMMs Intel® Optane™ Memory Ready ASMedia 3142 USB 3.1 Gen 2 with USB Type-C™ and Type-A Front USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C™ Header Multi-Way Graphics Support with Dual Armor and Ultra Durable™ Design 121dB SNR AMP-UP Audio with ALC1220 & High-End ESS SABRE 9018 DAC with WIMA audio capacitors Sound BlasterX 720°, the top-of-the-line audio engine solution for 4K gaming and entertainment Killer™ E2500 Gaming Network + Intel® Gigabit LAN RGB FUSION with Multi-Zone Digital LED Light Show design, support digital LED & RGB LED strips Swappable Overlay for Accent LED Smart Fan 5 features Multiple Temperature Sensors and Hybrid Fan Headers with FAN STOP Triple Ultra-Fast M.2 with PCIe Gen3 x4 interface and Thermal Guard USB DAC-UP 2 with Adjustable Voltage Precise Digital USB Fuse Design for Stronger Protection Anti-Sulfur Resistors Design Ultra Durable™ 25KV ESD and 15KV Surge LAN Protection Lightning-Fast Intel® Thunderbolt™ 3 AIC Support APP Center Including EasyTune™ and Cloud Station™ Utilities Motherboard Overview What AORUS Had to Say "The AORUS Z370 enthusiast motherboards are faster and more powerful than any other motherboards the world has seen. With aggressively redesigned armor and thermal heatsinks, its performance capabilities and durability are second to none. Performance is no stranger to AORUS, with exotic cooling and an ability to be tuned to peak performance, AORUS motherboards will exceed expectations." - AORUS Specifications For in-depth specifications, please visit the official product page here. 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. Testing and Methodology Test Procedure Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to disclose vital information regarding the benchmarking process so that readers can quantify the results and attempt to replicate them using their hardware. When it comes to motherboard reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Rember that your choice of motherboard, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there's always a margin for error when using the software. Therefore, your experience may vary. Each benchmark runs three times, and the average figure is taken to try to reduce the effect of hardware variation. Of course, any relevant details regarding the parameters will be listed below. Test Systems Z370 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - Crucial DDR4 2400MHz Dual-channel 16GB Intel Core i7-8700K CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X399 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - Crucial DDR4 2400MHz Quad-Channel 32GB CPU Cooler – Noctua D15S Graphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X299 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - Crucial DDR4 2400MHz Quad-Channel 32GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit AM4 Ryzen R3, R5 and R7 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - GeIL DDR4 2977MHz Dual Channel 16GB CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive - Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System - Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Z270 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM - Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 2666 MHz CPU Cooler – Noctua D15S Graphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X99 Motherboard – Changes Per Review RAM – Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 2666 MHz CPU Cooler - Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card - Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Open Air Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 64-bit Games Used All games are tested on a 60 Hz display with V-Sync off for all tests. Previously we would use "extreme" presets, but these have now been adjusted to "Medium" or equivalent to better test the capabilities of the CPU, not the GPU. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Pure Hair Off Deus Ex (Steam) DX12 Medium Preset Ghost Recon: Wildlands (Uplay) Medium Preset Turf Effects Off Far Cry Primal (Uplay) Normal Preset Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download) FireStrike (1080p) Benchmark Unigine Superposition (download) 1080p Extreme Benchmark PCMark 10 Professional (download) Express Benchmark WPrime (download) 32M and 1024M Power usage recorded at 1024M 50% complete, thermals recorded at 75% CineBench R15 (download) CPU Multi CPU Single Handbrake (download) Custom MP4 to MKV 4K conversion (details below) AIDA64 Engineer (download) CPU-Z (download) HWMonitor (download) Handbrake To stress processors to their absolute limit and accurately judge their performance in video editing workloads, we transcode a 7.7GB compilation of gaming footage; this particular file is freely available from here. The captured footage is 22 minutes and 12 seconds long, it has a bit rate of 50.1 Mbps and it uses the Advanced Video Codec. Additionally, the video runs at a constant 30 frames-per-second and opts for a 3820 x 2140 (4K) resolution. Once loaded into Handbrake, we then transcode the 4K MP4 to an MKV file using the "normal" profile. Other Notes A rest period of 2-5 minutes is observed between each piece of software allowing the system to return to its idle power usage and temperatures. Background services like Windows Update are checked to not be running during the testing period by setting WiFi to Metered Connection. Thanks Thank you to Noctua, Crucial, ASUS, Gigabyte, Lian-Li, be quiet!, OCZ, for providing the hardware that helps makes these tests possible! Synthetic Benchmarks 3DMark Firestrike A high-end motherboard should deliver high-end scores, and straight away the Gaming 7 is in at the number 3 spot on our chart with 23411 points, and 23879 once overclocked! Stock Overclocked Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme GPU throughput is pretty uniform for most motherboards the Gaming 7 scored strongly with 5561 and 5525, which is exactly what we were hoping for. Stock Overclocked PCMark 10 Express Multi-tasking performance is rather fantastic too, with our fifth and fourth highest scores at both stock then overclocked. Overall, this motherboard is shaping up to be quite a performer! Stock Overclocked WPrime 32M and 1024M This benchmark is very much down to the CPU, but the Gaming 7 isn't holding things up, with some of our fastest scores for Z370 to date. Stock Overclocked Cinebench R15 The same is true with Cinebench, with the Gaming 7 scoring some competitive results. Not the fastest, not the slowest, but certainly right on the money. Stock Overclocked Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K Handbrake scored well also, with 59.5 FPS at stock and 61 FPS once overclocked. Stock Overclocked AIDA 64 Memory Bandwidth and Latency Gaming Performance The Z370 platform has already proven to be a winner when it comes to delivering high FPS gaming performance. It comes as no surprise then that the Gaming 7 keeps the pace and delivered great results. In Deus Ex, we hit 151 FPS, one of our higher scores to date. The same was true in Rise of the Tomb Raider with 205 FPS. Moving on from our DirectX 12 benchmarks, the motherboard scored well in Ghost Recon with 140.5 FPS, which is only 1.4 FPS away from the top spot, despite being far from the top of the chart. Finally, Far Cry: Primal delivered our second highest score to date at 160 FPS. Overall, there's no doubting this motherboards gaming pedigree. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Rise of the Tomb Raider GhostRecon: Wildlands Far Cry Primal Power Consumption and Temperatures Power Consumption Stock Overclocked Final Thoughts Pricing The Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 7 is available from pretty much any major retailers. Right now, it's available on Amazon for just £231.39. That's far from the most affordable Z370 motherboard, but it's still one of the fastest, making it pretty fantastic value for money overall. Overview We've seen a huge amount of Aorus motherboards over the years here at eTeknix, and they continue to impress. They're usually not the cheapest, but with so many features crammed onto this motherboard, it goes a long way to justify it. Added value is no bad thing, and if you're after some over the top design features, and freaking sweet RGB lighting effects, the Gaming 7 will get you where you need to be. Performance The hardware choices on this motherboard are spot on. There's chunky cooling on all the important power delivery hardware. The choice of chokes, capacitors, and the PCB materials in general are all ticking the right boxes. Overall, this is quickly reflected in some of the best Z370 performance figures we've seen to date. A few motherboards do a little better but at a much bigger price premium. The style of the VRM heatsinks and the way the board flows really makes it pop, and it's sure to appeal to any high-end system builder. The armour on the PCIe slots and other hardware looks great too. Of course, it also prevents the PCB from flexing and keeps your hardware nice and secure, so it's as much practical as it is a treat for the eyes. Should I Buy One I really can't fault anything on this motherboard. It's a little expensive, but it delivers big performance and a flawless design that are sure to put a big smile on your face. It has all the features you could ask for, and great build quality to match. It's easily one of the best Z370 motherboards on the market today. Pros Excellent performance Stylish gaming aesthetics Armoured hardware Extensive RGB lighting and effects Good connectivity Optane Ready ALC1220 Audio Triple M.2 drive mounts Cons None