Back at Computex this year AMD announced two new motherboard chipsets for their then upcoming Ryzen 9000 series of CPUs, the X870 and X870E. The new chipsets would continue using the AM5 socket but have improvements including having USB 4.0 standard as well as PCIe Gen 5 for GPUs and NVMe on all of them as well. They also improved support for higher memory speeds using AMD EXPO. With the new chipsets, it's no surprise that the big names in the industry have a whole slate of new motherboard designs to go along with it, Gigabyte included. To start things off they sent over their X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 and I’m going to check out what it is all about today.

Product Name: Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7

Review Sample Provided by: Gigabyte

Written by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

Packaging and Accessories

The box for the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 has a black background with the Aorus branding just barely visible printed across all of the background. The Aorus logo with the eagle is up in the top left corner and that same eagle logo is across the whole front with a mechanical eagle. The X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 model name is there on the right and then the X870 chipset is the largest font in the corner with AMDs wrap-around that lets you know that this is an AM5 motherboard and supports Ryzen CPUs, DDR5, and PCIe 5.0. The black continues around the back but on the back they have pictures of the board featured. There is one full picture and then four more smaller pictures that highlight features. There is also a basic specification listing and a line drawing that shows the rear I/O which is all good information when shopping in person.

When you get inside you will find the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 wrapped up in a static protective bag and sitting in a cardboard tray that can be pulled out. There is a cardboard insert over that as well keeping things tight and safe. Then when you pull the board tray out you will find all of the other accessories hiding under the board.

For documentation, you get a universal installation guide and then a legal paper specific to all of the X870 boards. There is also a cool Aorus case badge which I metal and has that orange trim with the eagle logo.

For accessories, you get a few. There is a small bag with a front panel hookup guide. This lets you plug all of those connections in out away from your motherboard where it is easier to see, then you can plug this right into the board. There is a bag with two black SATA cables, one with a 90-degree plug on one end. Last up, you get the wireless antenna which is black and has small groves in its housing. It has a rubber grip on the bottom and magnets inside to stick to most cases. Then on the other end, it has a unique dual plug that clips right onto the antenna connection, avoiding having to screw the two connections in like in the past and this design plugs both in at once.

Board Layout and Pictures

These days most of the styling for motherboards seems to come down to the main color which you will sometimes see full white or grey boards but most use black. The X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 is available in a cool Ice version which has a white PCB and silver heatsinks but for the normal X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7, it is all blacked out. The exception to that is the branding which is in a light grey printed on the heatsinks and in a few places on the PCB. They have the Aorus name sitting over the rear I/O and then stripes that run across that, the M.2 heatsink, down to the chipset cooler. The Eagle logo is there on the other M.2 heatsink and next to the CPU you can see the full X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 model name printed as well. Everything else is blacked out which kind of hides how big the cooling is on the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7.

For cooling, the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 has a series of heatsinks, some of which are linked together. This starts up around the CPU with the two heatsinks at the top and left of it that help keep the VRMs cool. The X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 has a 16+2+2 digital twin VRM configuration and those two heatsinks are linked together with a small heatpipe to balance out the cooling there. The larger of the two coolers also integrates right into the cover for the rear I/O as well. These coolers have groves cut into both sides to have more surface area while leaving the top available for a little branding.

The other half of the cooling is all down in the bottom half of the board. This is a combination of three different heatsinks. The one on the far right is permanently mounted and that one handles cooling the chipset. Next to that is a large M.2 heatsink that goes over top of three M.2 slots. Of those three two are PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots and one is a PCIe 4.0. That cover has a cool quick release on the left side that will pop the entire heatsink off to install the drives. The last cooler is just above that and is a lot thicker because it doesn’t need to be under your video card. This is also an M.2 heatsink. It also has a cool quick release making it easy to install M.2s all across the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7.

Starting up in the top left corner that’s take a closer look at what all the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 has going on. This corner mostly has the CPU socket, rear I/O, and the VRM cooling taking up all of the space. But tucked up in the top left corner they do have the two CPU power connections. It has two full 8-pin connections but there isn’t anything else going on around here.

The top right on the other hand has a lot more going on. The biggest are the four DDR5 RAM slots sitting next to the CPU socket. These are all black to match the rest of the board and they do have clips on both ends, not just one end as you will see on some boards. Above that though they have slipped in two four-pin PWM headers for the CPU cooler and pump/extra fan. There is a small power button in white and a reset button next to that. Then two RGB headers. One RGB header is the standard four-pin RGB and the one below that is addressable RGB with its three pins. Also in the corner, you have a few status LEDs with small printed labels letting you know where in the boot process you are in case something hangs up. With those, there is also a two-digit readout for errors as well. Then moving down the side, next to the RAM is the 24-pin motherboard power. Interestingly there is an internal HDMI port facing out the side of the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7. This is there for outputting to a display inside or part of your case. Next to that is a newer style USB header for USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 speeds on your front panel connection. Then last up right at the bottom edge of the ram is a plastic button. This is hooked up to the PCIe slot to unlock the slot without having to fight with a hidden clip like in the past.

Moving to the bottom right corner there are a few things along the right edge. There is a noise detection header labeled as the db header then right below that the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 has four right-angled SATA ports. After that, also on the edge is a right-angled USB 3.1 header. That gets us down to the bottom where the is a lot going on including the CMOS battery and hidden below it is the clear CMOS header. The first connection in the bottom right corner is the front panel connection, which is all labeled but also works with the included helper plug. Then there are three more 4-pin fan headers which two are labeled with pump support. Above that there are two temperature probe plugs. Then you get into the USB 2.0 headers with two of those.

The bottom left ¼ of the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 mostly has the three PCIe slots and M.2 slots dominating the space so let's touch on those first before continuing with the other headers available. You have three x16-length PCIe slots. The top of those is a full x16 speed slot running at PCIe 5.0 when you run a CPU that supports it. The bottom two slots are slower with the one on top of the pair running PCIe 4.0 and at x4 lanes. This also shares bandwidth with one of the M.2 slots, so it will stop working with the M2D_SB slot is used. The bottom PCIe slot is then a PCIe 3.0 with just x2 lanes. The top main PCIe 5.0 PCIe slot does have a metal housing around it to give it more strength. Then there are a total of four M.2 slots, three under the main heatsink and one under the taller one above the main PCIe slot. That top one can fit longer M.2s whereas the other three can go as long as a standard 2280. Three of the M.2s are PCIe 5.0 and run off of the CPU and the last one is PCIe 4.0 and goes through the chipset. That is the same slot that turns off the PCIe x4 slot. Back to the bottom edge, starting where I left off before, next to the USB 2.0 headers there are three more 4-pin system fan headers giving a total of 8 on the board. Next to that is a compact TPM header and an ESPI or enhanced serial peripheral interface. Then you have two more RGB headers, both are which are addressable making a total of three addressable and one normal RGB. There is an LED demo jumper above that to put the board in demo mode. Then you have the front audio connection in the bottom left corner sitting with some of that part of the PCB isolated but there are a few large gaps in that isolation.

The rear I/O on the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 does come with the cover integrated so you don’t have to worry about forgetting to install that. It has a textured black finish across it which means when installed in most cases this is going to blend in well and look great. On the far left it has the Aorus branding along with a small push button for flashing your BIOS. Next to that is a new dual connection for your wireless antenna, this drops the screw-on style that has always been around for a snap into place solution. There are a total of 12 different USB connections starting on the left the black plugs are all USB 2.0. The four blue plugs are USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports. The two red ports are USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports. Then there are two Type-C USB 4 ports. Above those is a small vented section. There is one HDMI port for using onboard video and above the two red Gen 2 ports you have a red ethernet connection. The X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 has a Realtek 2.5GbE NIC. Then last up on the far right are the audio connections. You get just three, one microphone in, one audio out, and one optical out. They are using the Realtek ALC1220 CODEC. That one output can be changed to output 2/4/5.1/7.1.

The black and grey from the top continues on the bottom of the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 as well. In fact, there is a lot more going on down here than on the top really, and it's all printed on the black PCB. They have the Aorus branding along with a series of grey stripes at different angles. There aren’t any extra connections on the bottom but you can see the CPU backplate as well as a plate under the top PCIe x16 slot. That one has PCIE Armor printed on it showing that it is protecting the bottom of that and most importantly giving a little more strength to the slot that does the heavy lifting when it comes to today's modern video cards.

BIOS

Rather than have stacks of pictures I put together a basic video that just goes through and clicks on each menu option in the BIOS so if there is anything you want to check out you can see it and pause when needed. The BIOS for the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 drops you into the easy mode first which is good to see. This has BIOS and AGESA versions listed as well as your CPU and RAM information. You can drag and drop your boot device, turn on XMP or Expo profiles, and re-size bar support all on here. So for most users, this is all you will need. Going into the advanced mode has a tweaker tab which has consolidated all of the overclocking settings but the AMD CBS menus aren’t here, they are in the settings tab which you will need for any major tweaking. The settings menu dives into everything else including all of the features for things like M.2/SATA, your NIC, and whatnot. The system info page is what you used to see as a landing page for most BIOS, you can change the system date and language and get BIOS revision and CPU model information. Then last up on the top menus is the boot menu. This just has your boost options and settings. Every page in the advanced menu has a section on the right that shows the current CPU frequency, BCLK, Temperature, and voltage as well as the size and frequency for your RAM, and a few key voltages as well. Down at the bottom of the page, you can open up the Smart Fan 6 tool which lets you set your fan profiles up, and the Q-Flash tool which is used to update your BIOS. Overall, the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 has everything you would expect and need in the BIOS and it isn’t hard to navigate in both the Easy and Advanced modes.

 Test Rig and Procedures

Test System

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D – Live Pricing

Cooling: Corsair H100i RGB Platinum - Live Pricing

Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste - Live Pricing

  Memory:   G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo DDR5 16GBx2 6000MHz - Live Pricing

Storage:   Kingston FURY Renegade 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD- Live Pricing

Video Card: Nvidia RTX 4090 FE - Live Pricing

Power Supply: Corsair AX1200 - Live Pricing

Case: Primochill Wetbench - Live Pricing

OS: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit - Live Pricing

Performance

When it comes to performance testing, typically motherboard to motherboard we aren’t going to see any big performance difference when running the same components and clock speeds. The exception to that is when boards are auto overclocking of course and there are a few areas where components can make a difference like with ethernet and USB controllers. For testing the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 I ran a few games, 3Dmark tests, Passmark, and PCMark. Because this is the first X870 tested there aren’t any comparisons just yet. The network tests however are a good look at how well the wireless worked as well as the wired NIC. Sadly the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7, as the name suggests, has Wifi 7 and our network is still running Wifi 6E so this isn’t a look at the maximum possible speed, but it does give an idea of how the wireless antenna performs which is a big part in the wireless performance. Speaking of, the antenna worked well with its magnetic base making it easy to stick in place.

Some boards have lighting and the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 does have some RGB lighting built in. Specifically, they have put lighting up under the chipset heatsink. Beyond that, you just have the status LEDs up in the top right corner.

While testing I also ran the AIDA64 CPU FPU stress test for a half hour and took a look at the thermals in the VRM heatsinks. The hotspot was on the bank of VRMs between the CPU socket and the rear I/O and there was a little heatsoak into the PCB but overall the heatsink did a great job of spreading that heat out across the two heatsinks which is great to see.

Overall and Final Verdict

I haven’t taken a look at any of the Gigabyte motherboards for a few years and I’ve been missing out. The X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 is one of 10 boards that Gigabyte is launching today and it is their highest-end X870 model alongside of the matching X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 Ice white/silver model. Going with X870 over X870E means half as many USB and SATA ports and fewer chipset PCIe lanes which as we saw with the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 does limit the use of one of the PCIe slots if you fill up the one chipset ran M.2 slot. I’m always looking for more USB ports but that may be partially because I am always testing new hardware. But the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 isn’t sitting too bad on ports overall and you do get a good mix of older USB 2.0, USB 3.2 Gen 1, and USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports. Not to mention the rear I/O has two Type-C USB 4.0 ports as well. The similar X870E Aorus Elite Wifi7 does get more internal USB headers if you think you will need more.

Beyond that, the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 looks good styling and the neutral blacked-out design of this model should work well in most builds. They also have the Ice model as well which looks even better as well. Four M.2 slots with three of those supporting PCIe 5.0 (if your CPU supports it) should be more than enough for all but the craziest of builds. You even get an internal HDMI port for those who want to put in a screen INSIDE of their PC. You also have the easy unlock PCIe button which makes removing today's huge video cards a lot easier. I’ve damaged a board or two trying to press down the eject button between a big GPU and a heatsink in the past. Really the only issue I had with the board at all, and it's not that big of a deal was with the RGB lighting. It was interesting to me that they went with 5 under glow LEDs up under the chipset heatsink for lighting but none anywhere else on the board. I don’t care if I have lighting at all, but if you are going to add it at least get some in a few places around the board.

For pricing the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 has an MSRP of $289.99 which given that it is a higher-end X870 board isn’t bad. Gigabyte did tell me that they have a $10-$20 rebate on some of the boards they are launching today but the X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7  wasn’t included in that. They also have a $20 reward for honest reviews posted on retailers. The link for that is HERE. The big thing for me though was the news that there is no longer a premium for white models of motherboards. The matching X870 Aorus Elite Wifi7 Ice has the same 289.99 price point.

Live Pricing: HERE

Author Bio

Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org

Editor-in-chief

You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.