Gigabyte X570 AORUS XTREME Motherboard Review

AORUS X570 XTREME Some motherboards, if not a lot of them, are created fairly equally. The AORUS X570 XTREME on the other hand, looks set to create a new standard for AMD motherboards. Of course, it's got its rivals from the likes of MSI and ASUS, who have their own flagship, but will the AORUS X570 XTREME have the edge? Of course, today marks the launch of dozens of X570 motherboards, along side the brand new 7nm AMD Ryzen 3rd Gen CPUs, and even the 7nm Radeon RX graphics cards. So yes, I am taking tomorrow off of work! But I digress, as the AORUS X570 XTREME is more than exciting enough to work this weekend. Featuring a stunning 16 Phases Infineon Digital VRM setup, with their massive fins-array heatsink design and a NanoCarbon Baseplate. This motherboard takes cooling and overclocking extremely seriously. One of the biggest and most impressive features of this motherboard is the X570 chipsets active fan. Every other X570 motherboard has one, but this one doesn't! They've compensated by turning the entire motherboard into a massive heatsink, and that means pure silence and bliss from the AORUS X570 XTREME. Of course, it's got plenty of other flagship worthy features too. 3 x PCIe 4.0 full-size lanes, as well as 3 x Gen4 M.2 mounts for ultra-fast storage. Networking gets a boost too, with 10GbE LAN and 1GbE LAN and WiFi 6 as standard. If that's not enough for you, you'll find incredible ESS Sabre HiFi audio, RGB Fan commander, RGB Fusion 2, and a plethora of USB and SATA connectivity options too... Excited now? You should be. Features Supports AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen™/ 2nd Gen Ryzen™/ 2nd Gen Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics/ Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics ProcessorsDual Channel ECC/ Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 4 DIMMsDirect 16 Phases Infineon Digital VRM Solution with 70A Power StageThermal Reactive Armor Design with Fins-Array Heatsink, Direct Touch Heatpipe and NanoCarbon BaseplateTriple Ultra-Fast NVMe PCIe 4.0/3.0 x4 M.2 with Triple Thermal GuardsOnboard Intel® WiFi 6 802.11ax 2T2R & BT 5 with 2X AORUS AntennaRear 130dB SNR AMP-UP Audio with ALC1220-VB & ESS SABRE 9218 DAC with WIMA Audio CapacitorsAQUANTIA® 10GbE BASE-T LAN + Intel® Gigabit LAN with cFosSpeedExclusive RGB FAN COMMANDER for Professional CasemodersUSB TurboCharger for Mobile Device Fast Charge SupportRGB FUSION with Multi-Zone Addressable LED Light Show Design, Support Addressable LED & RGB LED StripsSmart Fan 5 Features Multiple Temperature Sensors, Hybrid Fan Headers with FAN STOP and Noise DetectionFront & Rear USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C™ HeadersQ-Flash Plus Update BIOS Without Installing CPU, Memory and Graphics Card CPU Support Please keep in mind that Ryzen X570 motherboards only support Ryzen 2nd Gen and 3rd Gen CPUs. Despite being AM4 sockets, they do not currently work with Ryzen 1st Gen processors. Furthermore, for those wanting to use the full PCIe 4.0 functionality, you'll also need to use the latest 3rd Gen CPUs. Show me More We've got a LOT of new reviews to show you today, check out the entire list of motherboards, CPUs and graphics cards below; Gigabyte X570 AORUS Master Motherboard ReviewGigabyte X570 AORUS Pro Motherboard ReviewASUS RoG Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard Review ReviewMSI MEG X570 GODLIKE Motherboard ReviewASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus (WiFi) Motherboard ReviewASUS ROG STRIX X570-E Gaming Motherboard ReviewMSI MEG X570 ACE Motherboard ReviewGigabyte X570 I AORUS Pro WiFi Motherboard ReviewGigabyte X570 AORUS XTREME Motherboard ReviewASRock X570 Motherboard ReviewASUS PRIME X570-Pro Motherboard ReviewAMD Radeon RX5700 & 5700 XT Graphics Cards ReviewAMD Ryzen 7 3700X & Ryzen 8 3800X Processor Review Photo Gallery The AORUS X570 XTREME is certainly a fantastic looking motherboard. The whole thing is pretty much all armoured heatsinks and heatpipes. Not only does it make it look like a panel off of Batman's armour, but it's also practical too. The armoured heatsinks are there to cool those massive VRMs. However, as you can see, there's a heat pipe that extends the cooling all the way down to the chipset in the bottom right. This is the only X570 motherboard (that we know of) which does not have an active fan to cool the chipset. That alone makes it stand out from the huge range of motherboards launching today. The power delivery is serious business too. You'll find 2 x 8 pin PSU headers, feeding through a 2x Copper 8 Layer PCB, and a Direct 16 Phase Digital VRM. That's likely more than anyone ever needs. However, if you're pushing the limits of AMD's latest flagship CPUs under liquid cooling or even LN2, that level of power stability could be what breaks world records. On the right, you'll find a plethora of connections for fans and RGB headers. There's also some large on-board power buttons, which is superb if you're on a test-bench like I am. However, the most amazing thing here is that there are absolutely no right angle headers for the power cables and storage device. Power The whole right side of the motherboard is side mounted connectors. This is going to work wonders for your cable routing and management. It just looks fantastic, and I be many other brands will follow suit with a similar design on their high-end boards in the future. Of course, we've got PCIe 4.0, with three full-size armoured lanes, as well triple M.2 mounts hiding behind all that armour. Well, not just armour, again, it's all heatsink that will help improve the high-end performance of your new drives. The back row is just as sexy as the rest of this motherboard too. Of course, you'll notice the built-in I/O shield, so no forgetting that during the installation. There's a plethora of USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports as well as a lovely Type-C port. There are 10 GbE and 1 GbE networking for all your LAN needs and then some. Plus, WiFi 6 thrown in, so you're literally getting the best networking you could ask for here. Throw in those handy BIOS buttons too. Finally, Hi-Res audio outputs powered by the mighty ALC1220-VB & ESS SABRE 9218 DAC with WIMA Audio Capacitors and you couldn't ask for much more here. How We Test 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 our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Remember 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 any software. Therefore, your experience may vary. Testing Your Own System Links are provided below, as well as the settings we use. We encourage you to not just look at how one product compares to any other, but how it compares to your own. If you’re looking to build a new system, you should benchmark your current PC using our benchmarks and settings where possible. You should then look at the percentage improvement from your current hardware to the hardware we tested to give you a ballpark figure of how much an upgrade this will provide you with. Intel Testbenches Z390 Motherboard – Changes Per ReviewCPU – Intel Core i9-9900KRAM – Crucial 32GB (4 x 8GB) 3000 MHzCPU Cooler – Noctua D15SGraphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 TiPower Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 WattMain Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GBChassis – Lian Li T80 Test BenchOperating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Z370 Motherboard – Changes Per ReviewCPU – Intel Core i7-8700KRAM – Crucial 32GB (4 x 8GB) 3000 MHzCPU Cooler – Noctua D15SGraphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 TiPower Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 WattMain Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GBChassis – Lian Li T80 Test BenchOperating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X299 Motherboard – Changes Per ReviewCPU – Intel Core i9-7900XRAM – Crucial DDR4 2400MHz Quad-Channel 32GBCPU Cooler – Noctua D15S with dual fansGraphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 TiPower Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 WattMain Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GBChassis – Lian Li T80 Test BenchOperating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit B360 Motherboard – Changes Per ReviewCPU – Intel Core i7-8700KRAM – Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 2666 MHzCPU Cooler – Noctua D15SGraphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 TiPower Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 WattMain Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GBChassis – Lian Li T80 Test BenchOperating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit AMD Testbenches X399 (Threadripper) Motherboard – Changes Per ReviewCPU – Threadripper 1950XRAM – Crucial 32GB (4 x 8GB) 3000 MHzCPU Cooler – Noctua D15SGraphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 TiPower Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 WattMain Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GBChassis – Lian Li T80 Test BenchOperating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X570 Motherboard – Changes Per ReviewCPU – Ryzen 9 3900XRAM – G.Skill 3400MHz Dual Channel 16GBCPU Cooler – Noctua D15S with dual fansGraphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 TiPower Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 WattMain Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GBChassis – Lian Li T80 Test BenchOperating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X470 Motherboard – Changes Per ReviewCPU – Ryzen 7 2700XRAM – G.Skill 3400MHz Dual Channel 16GBCPU Cooler – Noctua D15S with dual fansGraphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 TiPower Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 WattMain Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GBChassis – Lian Li T80 Test BenchOperating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X370 Motherboard – Changes Per ReviewCPU – Ryzen 7 1800XRAM – GeIL DDR4 2977MHz Dual Channel 16GBCPU Cooler – Noctua D15S with dual fansGraphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 TiPower Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 WattMain Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GBChassis – Lian Li T80 Test BenchOperating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit B450 Motherboard – Changes Per ReviewCPU – Ryzen 7 2700XRAM – G.Skill 3400MHz Dual Channel 16GBCPU Cooler – Noctua D15S with dual fansGraphics Card – Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 TiPower Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 WattMain Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GBChassis – Lian Li T80 Test BenchOperating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Games and Settings Used All games are tested on a 60 Hz display with V-Sync off for all tests. Rise of the Tomb Raider (Steam)DX12 Medium PresetPure Hair OffDeus Ex (Steam)DX12 Medium PresetGhost Recon: Wildlands (Uplay)Medium PresetTurf Effects OffFar Cry Primal (Uplay)Normal Preset Software Used 3DMark Fire Strike (download)FireStrike (1080p) BenchmarkUnigine Superposition (download)1080p Extreme BenchmarkPCMark 10 Professional (download)Express BenchmarkWPrime (download)32M and 1024MPower usage recorded at 1024M 50% complete, thermals recorded at 75% completeCineBench R15 (download)CPU MultiCPU SingleCineBench R20 (download)CPU MultiCPU SingleHandbrake (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. Updates All games, graphics card drivers, BIOS, Windows and everything else is always kept up to date with the latest available. Older benchmarks may not be retested until stated otherwise. However, all hardware will be tested with the best and latest firmware and software available to that hardware at the time of review. As of 1st of May 2018, all hardware was retested on their latest drivers. Anything after this date will again be using their most recent versions available to them. 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 Scores 3DMark – 23372Unigine – 5795PCMark 10 – 7389WPrime – 2.554/56.295Cinebench R15 – 202/3164Cinebench R20 – 494/7151Handbrake – 76.6 3DMark Firestrike Unigine Superposition PCMark 10 Express WPrime Cinebench R15 CineBench R20 Handbrake MP4 to MKV Conversion 4K Gaming Performance Scores Rise of the Tomb Raider – 197.15Deus Ex – 94.1/125.9Ghost Recon – 119.7/130.24Far Cry – 100/128 Rise of the Tomb Raider Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Ghost Recon Far Cry Overclocking With X570 being a brand new platform, we have chosen to put the overclocking testing on hold. We've tested around ten motherboards with the overclocked CPU settings and honest, the results were broadly the same. For now, I refer you to our CPU reviews, which feature the overclocking results of the X570 chipset. I'll also include the links on the first and last pages of each motherboard review. AMD Ryzen 7 3700X & Ryzen 8 3800X Processor Review We're waiting for the platform to mature, get the launch out of the way, and we'll then take a deeper dive into overclocking on X570 with Ryzen 3rd Gen. Not only do we think this will be more useful to you, we think we'll also be able to get even better results to differentiate the motherboards when we do. Sit tight, it's coming, and we're sure it'll be worth the wait. Power ConsumptionS How Much Does it Cost? Unfortunately, at the time of writing, we didn't have accurate pricing information on any X570 motherboard. However, you can check up to date pricing in the UK here and in the US here. However, this is the flagship X570 motherboard from AORUS, so expect it to be somewhere north of £700-750, in line with what we expect from rivals like ASUS and MSI. That hurts, I know, but this is basically the most advanced X570 motherboard hitting the market, so... Overview AORUS have gone above and beyond with their flagship motherboard. Sure, all the flagships from ASUS, MSI and others are truly outstanding in their own ways too. However, I think the AORUS X570 XTREME XTREME is a cut above the rest. Unlike the MSI GODLIKE, this one has the 10 GbE built into the motherboard. Unlike literally every other X570 motherboard we know of, this one DOES NOT have an active chipset fan on the motherboard. The whole thing is just one beastly heatsink, so it's currently the only silent X570 series motherboard too. Plus with a 16 Phases VRM and 8 layer PCB, it's 1st class when it comes to overclocking and power delivery. Build Quality Seriously, it's hardly like I was going to say the build quality is reasonable. It's phenomenal is what it is. Everything is armoured and reinforced for reliability and performance. Every choke, every capacitor, every connection, is as good as they get. In fact, some are better than usual. Take the right side of the motherboard, which features their Solid Pin armoured connections, which are all 90-degree mounted for easy cable routing. Every Gen4 PCIe M.2 mount has a huge heatsink, and the list goes on and on. Performance Well, it's certainly not slow, that's for sure. It scored one of the top scores in 3DMark, although didn't quite beat the GODLIKE, it was just 5 points away. The same is true in the other CPU heavy benchmarks, it didn't score the highest, but we're running stock here. I suspect when it comes to overclocking, the stability and board cooling here are going to pay off in the long run. It's built for overclocking, and we're looking forward to diving into that in an upcoming feature. Added Value The added value here really does come at a cost, but that's a running trend on X570 so far; you get great stuff, but it sure as hell isn't cheap. I love the inclusion of their AMP-UP Audio though, which uses the superb ALC 1220-VB Codec, with an ESS SABRE DAC. Plus the inclusion of AQUANTIA 10GbE Base-T LAN and Intel LAN, and Wifi 6, and BT5 mean you'll never be short on connectivity. Other high-end perks include the extensive Gen2 USB connections, PCIe 4.0 Turbo B-Clock IC, Turbo Charge, and extensive ARGB configuration. Should I Buy One Well, it sure as heck isn't something I think a lot of people can afford. It's going to be painfully expensive. However, it's by far one of the most feature-packed motherboards to ever sit on our test bench. We could spend 50 pages on this review before we got through it all. However, for extreme overclocking and being the only fan-less X570 motherboard around, we can't help but love the AORUS X570 XTREME. Gigabyte X570 AORUS Master Motherboard ReviewGigabyte X570 AORUS Pro Motherboard ReviewASUS RoG Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard Review ReviewMSI MEG X570 GODLIKE Motherboard ReviewASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus (WiFi) Motherboard ReviewASUS ROG STRIX X570-E Gaming Motherboard ReviewMSI MEG X570 ACE Motherboard ReviewGigabyte X570 I AORUS Pro WiFi Motherboard ReviewGigabyte X570 AORUS XTREME Motherboard ReviewASRock X570 Motherboard ReviewASUS PRIME X570-Pro Motherboard ReviewAMD Radeon RX5700 & 5700 XT Graphics Cards ReviewAMD Ryzen 7 3700X & Ryzen 8 3800X Processor Review