Ushering in the next-gen Ryzen AM5 chip, Gigabyte has a range of new motherboards for you to pick up at the same time. One of which is the new Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7. This board come with the AMD Ryzen AM5 socket but you don’t need to use a new AMD Ryzen CPU here.
Watch The Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7 Review
Of course, it would be ideal to have the latest Ryzen CPU given the board’s support. However, the nice thing about AMD is that you don’t need to buy a new CPU with a new board all the time, unlike Intel… This board comes with support for 7000, 8000 and 9000 Series Ryzen CPUs. AMD says it will also support the next four generations of CPUs from the brand. So you can look at this board as a long-term investment.
Keep in mind that some previous AMD Ryzen Series CPUs will have limited compatibility when used on this board. For the most part, they will function fine but the 8000 Series, for example, won’t support the latest Gen 5 NVMe or PCIe slots. This is the limitation of the chip itself and not the board. The 7000 and 9000 Series have no limitations here and you’ll be able to use the PCIe 5 x16 mode and Gen 5 NVMe. The one thing the 9000 Series can do over the 7000 and 8000 is support RAID 5.
Unboxing the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7, you’ll get the motherboard itself and very few select accessories. This includes a bag with SATA cables, the G Connector, which is great for connecting the board to the case IO at ease, and the Wi-Fi 7 antenna. There’s also some paperwork including the manuals, warranty and quick start guide. You’ll also get an Aorus sticker.
X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7 is quite a beefy motherboard. When it comes to new features, there are a few I want to mention. Gigabyte has now included an HDMI port on the inside of the board and on the back IO. The internal port is called the Sensor Panel Link. It allows you to connect small LCD or sensor panels to the motherboard for monitoring your PC performance at a glance. I don’t know where you can get these sensor panels exactly but if you get one, this board supports it.
There’s also a convenient new Wi-Fi 7 EZ-Plug which has replaced the previous inconvenient screw antennas on the previous board. This makes it a breeze to plug in the antenna. Of course, Wi-Fi 7 is a big deal on this board specifically. You’ll need a supported router to use it. Wi-Fi 7 is gradually rolling out so again, the board is ready for whenever you upgrade.
There’s a dual USB4 Type-C port selection with up to 40GB/s of speed and Display Port Alt support. Gigabyte has also added Q-Flash Plus to the back IO. It is not new tech but has been limited to most of the Master boards in the past.
When it comes to RGB, there is 1 RGB LED header and 3 ARGB LED headers. You’ll find 3 PCIe 5.0 M.2 Slots and 1 PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot. The board also includes 1 PCIe 5.0 x16, 1 PCIe 4.0 x4 and 1 PCIe 3.0 x 2 slot. The board supports up to 256GB of DDR5 RAM.
From a design point of view, the board looks great. The full-black exterior is clean. There are a few Aorus decals here and there. One covers the M.2 slots, the other is slapped across the VRM Thermal Section. This specific part of the board houses an 8mm Heatpipe with a 7W/mk Thermal Pad all topped with an IO shield.
Gigabyte boasts how tool-less the board is and apart from the initial installation into your case, you don’t need any tools to get around. The M.2 slots include screw-less EZ-latches and the PCIe EZ latch makes it easy to remove your GPU. Speaking of the Gen 5 PCIe slot, it is also armoured for a bit more protection against sagging.
The board doesn’t have much RGB. You’ll find a light under the heatsink next to the M.2 slots. It can be synced with your PC using the Gigabyte Control Centre. In classic Aorus Elite fashion, this board is subtle.
X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7 Installation
Installing the X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7 is just like any other ATX board. For this content, I actually built a new PC and moved away from my previous Cooler Master Cosmos C200M case. Gigabyte sent me the Aourus C700 case which was the last PC product I needed to turn my PC into a full Gigabyte build. This case is impressive and is likely one of the best-looking models I have played around with.
My day-to-day PC now includes the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7, Gigabyte NVIDIA RTX 4080 SUPER GAMING OC, Gigabyte Aorus WateForce X II 360 Cooler, Gigabyte UD1000GM PG5 PCIE 5 power supply all packed into the Aorus C700 GLASS case. It took a few years to get there but thanks to the brand for always being willing to help support the channel. I think the final build looks pretty wild. The case is especially so clean.
I didn’t have much hassle getting the board into this case and plugging everything in. I attached the cooler, and GPU, wired it all up and powered the PC on. I made sure to update the motherboard BIOS before anything else. I downloaded the files on a USB from the support page.
The full bench build included the following hardware
- AMD Ryzen 9900X
- Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7
- Gigabyte Aorus Waterforce X II 360 Cooler
- Gigabyte RTX 4080 SUPER Gaming OC
- Gigabyte Aorus C700 GLASS Case
- Gigabyte UD1000GM PG5 PCIE 5 PSU
- Kingston 6400
- Seagate FireCuda 1TB Gen 4 M.2 SSD
The BIOS itself was easy to navigate around too. There is an Easy Mode and Advanced Mode. There’s a lot to tweak here and Gigabyte has highlighted key features of the board using a star icon. The Smart Fan mode offers fan customization and there are a number of quick overclocking tools available, which I will get into in a bit.
First off we have the AMD Ryzen 9900X. I ran all these tests with the CPU clock speeds at default. I also measured the motherboard temperatures to see how well this Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7 held up.
Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7 Benchmarks
During my tests, the AMD Ryzen 9 9900X peaked at 88C during multi-thread tests and 62C during single-thread tests. The CPU boosted up to 5.6GHz on multi-core and 5.3GHz on single-core during benchmarks and used a max of 163W of power. Keep in mind that these stats are from the CPU completely untouched when it comes to overclocking and and voltage tweaks. The motherboard itself kept fairly cool with the CPU area peaking at 43C around the CPU sensor and 32C on the other sensor.
Across both tests, the RAM PCB temperature peaked at 42C. Keep in mind that throughout all these tests, I left the Waterforce cooler fans and pump on Balanced and the case fans on Balanced too. So there were no extreme cases to try and keep the hardware cool. So if you’re someone who just buys a motherboard, puts a CPU in and uses it without worrying about overclocking and cooling, this is the experience and temperature you’ll get.
I then enabled some overclocking. I enabled the Precision Boost Overdrive Enhancement which allows you to select a higher target temperature which results in a higher boost frequency on the CPU. There are 90C, 80C and 70C options. I select 80C level 1. I also enabled the TDP to 105W setting. This is a new setting on select Gigabyte boards that bypasses the 65W TDP cap on the CPU to enable more performance.
Of course, you can always overclock manually which is likely the way you’ll do it. But Auto OC and PBO are great user-friendly ways to squeeze more juice out of your system. You also need to remember that CPUs nowadays have little headroom for overclocking because they are so powerful and most of the time, overclocked out of the box. So you’ll likely be fine without touching the auto OC options anyway.
After enabling those settings and turning up my fans and pump to performance, the motherboard remained at 40C around the CPU during these new benchmarks. The CPU itself then hovered around 72C. So the change not only increased performance but showed that even if I left my cooling the same, there wouldn’t have been major differences in the temps. I do enjoy PBO for what it is, an easy way to get more power from your CPU if you have the cooling headroom for it. Here are some scores I got compared to when it was disabled.
Ryzen 9900X Benchmarks With Board Overclocks
Keep in mind that I am not reviewing a CPU here. But I wanted to show how well the board handles the heat. In this case, the cooling on the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7 is good showing a max of 42C when running tests and leaving my fan system and pump on balanced. Even after an hour of stress tests, this remained the same. There’s a lot of room here for those who want to push their CPUs performance more without worrying about thermals on the board.
I ran some RAM speed tests on the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7. These tests were done with out-of-the-box settings and compared to the ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero board I was also testing at the time.
Apart from that, the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7 performed quite well. Ultra Fast Boot Mode is incredibly quick booting to Windows 11 within just 11 seconds. I also enjoyed the simple BIOS format and accessible tweaks the board includes to the system -mainly for quick overclocking.
Of course, the board is also future-proof which is great. The Wi-Fi 7 support means it provides excellent speeds and stability for the next-gen wireless format. It might not be mainstream yet but great to have the feature there. PCIE-5 is also welcome even though it has been around for a while now. Gen4 SSDs are likely enough for most users but the ability to add Gen5 is a great option to have too. I am hoping to get my builds on Gen5 very soon.
With all that said, I do enjoy the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7. The board is feature-packed and offers some incredible cooling and voltage options all while being highly accessible for all users. In SA, this board is expected to sell for R6,999. It is on the pricier side but does secure a few years of service without the worry of missing features. I do wish it had another USB 3.2 header because moving from the X670E Master, I now can’t plug in the extra front ports on the C700. But apart from that, I highly recommend the board.
The Gigabyte X870 AORUS Elite is available in South Africa for R6,999 from 7 October. Visit the official site to find out more about the board. Visit Wootware to pick it up.
Gigabyte X870 AORUS Elite Wi-Fi 7
Summary
The Gigabyte X870 AORUS Elite Wi-Fi 7 is an exceptional board that provides high-performance, cooling and future-proof features. It is also a very capable board with a lot of breathing room for overclocking and performance enhancements. It handles its cooling and the easy overclocking tools make it a breeze to get more performance out of it. It also includes all the ports you’ll need and the ones you don’t, you’ll need soon.
