Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 9 X299 Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts

Price

The flagship motherboard from any brand is always going to be their most expensive. That’s certainly true of the Gigabyte AORUS X299 Gaming 9 motherboard, which clocks in at a wallet-busting £529.99. To put that into perspective, the Gaming 3 is just £299.99, and the Gaming 7 is £452.99. The price is all relative though, given that the Core i9-7900X is well over £1000, and the kind of storage devices and GPUs that this motherboard would typically be paired with are equally credit card breaking. Overall, the motherboard is far from the most expensive component for a flagship build, even at £529.99.

Overview

Where do I even begin to give an overview of this board? I think it is safe to say at this point that we’ve barely scratched the surface of what the Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 9 has to offer. Of course, we’ve tested the main aspects that any consumer is likely to enjoy, however, it goes way beyond this. It is a gaming motherboard primarily, but with so many overclocking features, it could easily be a popular choice for the LN2 users out there, even those building a hybrid workstation and gaming PC, especially when paired with the Core i9 CPUs.

ALL OF THE RGB!

This motherboard has more lights than I’ve had hot dinners. OK maybe not that many, but it’s certainly up there in terms of lighting swagger. Sure, some people loathe the RGB crazy, but I have good news for you, you can turn them all off. However, if you’re eager to have extensive lighting customisation for your build, it’ll certainly meet your needs. While there’s RGB all over the board, there are also headers to hook up external lighting strips and more, so all bases covered there.

Connectivity is Everything

With three M.2 drive bays built-in and a fourth courtesy of the included PCIe M.2 adaptor, hooking up those blazing fast drives is going to be easy. Adding to that, it has dual USB 3.0 motherboard headers, USB 3.1, a good amount of connectors at the back I/O, 8 x SATA 6Gbps, U.2, and more, you’ll not be left wanting here. Finally, blazing fast LAN and WiFi help ensure you’ve got everything you need to stay connected.

Overclocking

Without a doubt, this board has an overclocking pedigree behind it. With dual 8-pin CPU headers, there’s no shortage of power to the CPU here, and the board was perfectly stable throughout all of our tests. In fact, the only limiting factor we ran into was the CPU temperatures of the i9-7900X, which can easily hit 100C and above when pushing closer to 5GHz, so be sure you invest in a big ol’ cooler to get the most from your CPU, and achieve the targets the motherboard is capable of delivering.

Overclocking was great, however, it’s the stock CPU performance that surprised the most. Compared to the X299-E from ASUS, this board was able to maintain better clocks and temperatures for much longer compared to the more affordable X299-E. This meant that at stock clocks, the Gaming 9 often pulled far ahead in our benchmarks. Of course, I wouldn’t expect anyone buying this board not to overclock, but it was still worth mentioning.

One X299 To Rule Them All

I would be very and genuinely surprised if there’s much else to be gained from the X299 platform, even this early on. Of course, the Gaming 9 is built upon fairly well-established hardware in terms of features. However, the main focus here is more PCIe lan, and those new higher core CPUs. While the motherboard is far from cheap, it’s sitting at the top of our benchmark charts when paired with the Core-i9. Afterall, those who seek the best performance will always be willing to pay for it.

Pros

• Supports latest Intel CPUs
• More PCIe lanes over the last generation
• Exceptional overclocking capabilities
• Top-of-the-line build quality
• Stunning aesthetics
• More RGB than I know what to do with
• Ideal for enthusiast gaming systems and workstations
• On-board power and overclocking buttons
• Excellent connectivity
• Good M.2 support + PCIe M.2 mount
• Premium grade audio hardware
• Optane Ready

Cons

• It’s pretty darn expensive, but you’ll always pay a premium for the flagship products

“With more features than even most enthusiasts will ever use, the AORUS Gaming 9 offers best-in-class performance from the latest Intel processors.”