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.
