Aorus gaming 7 wifi review: GIGABYTE X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WIFI Motherboard Review

Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 Wi-Fi review

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Our Verdict

It’s not perfect, for sure, but this definitely falls into that “greater than the sum of its parts” mantra, and that’s something we can absolutely get behind.

For
  • Consistent performance
  • Value for money
  • Extensive feature set
  • Good for video editing
  • Very stable
Against
  • Software and BIOS still need work

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You know what’s awesome about this motherboard? The heatsinks. Seriously, look at them: real heatsinks. OK, portions of them are covered in stylistic design elements, sure, but those are genuine fins there, capable of dissipating really hearty VRM thermal energy far better than some of the standardized aesthetic affairs we’ve been seeing for the last few years. Even though each generation of die shrink typically increases the number of transistors by 40 percent or more, the actual real-world performance increase has been more than lackluster in comparison.

Specifications

Price: $230
Chipset/Socket: X470/AM4
Form Factor: ATX
Memory Support: 64GB DDR4 @ 3,600
M.2/U.2 Support: 2x M.2
SATA Support: 6x SATA 6Gb/s
Max PCIe Support: 3x PCIe x16 (max PCIe x8x8)
Rear I/O: 1x USB 3.1 Type A, 1x USB 3.1 Type C, 6x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0, Intel Gigabit Ethernet, Wireless A/C, 5.1 audio, optical audio out, clear CMOS, power button

What this has lead to is the big chip manufacturers scrambling to get as much performance as possible by other means. Whether that’s through architectural changes, or more advanced technical measures (such as increasing core count through multiple dies), this has lead to a significant increase in overall power being pumped through the VRMs. More power means more heat, and eventually, especially when overclocking, this leads to VRMs throttling the amount of voltage they manage, to ensure they don’t breach their own thermal limits, which in turns slows down the processor.

We’ve seen it with X299, we’ve seen it with Coffee Lake, and we’ve even seen it at the higher end of Ryzen—if you want the absolute maximum performance you can possibly get from your chip, having heatsinks that are, you know, actually effective is of paramount importance.

But let’s get serious—this is the Aorus Gaming 7 Wi-Fi, Gigabyte’s finest X470 flagship. Aside from the glorious fins lining the VRMs, it comes packing absolutely everything the Taiwanese company could pitch at a board. We’re talking twin M.2 heatsinks, copious RGB connectivity and lighting, a premium DAC solution, dual eight-pin and four-pin EPS power, a 10+2 CPU power phase setup, eight PWM fan headers, a reinforced backplate, a whole host of internal USB headers, wireless A/C, and enough rear I/O to keep even the most avid USB enthusiast happy. If you can think of it, and it’s possible to fit it on the board, it’s here.

Performing arts

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Looking for more info before you buy a new motherboard? Check out our guide to the best gaming motherboards.

All that frilly stuff aside, the Gaming 7 performs admirably where it matters. In our tests, it scored a solid 33.6fps in our x264 benchmark, and a stable 1,652 points in our Cinebench R15 multicore test. Power draw was on a par with our other top-end board, as were games. The only thing that was slightly down was the CrystalDisk QD32 sequential write speeds at 428MB/s versus the Crosshair VI’s (our comparative board of choice) 450MB/s. But all in all, a solid performance.

Overclocking was not hugely different; we managed to hit our Ryzen 7 1800X’s limit of 4GHz across all eight cores easily enough at 1.425V on the VCore. That’s a little higher than we would have liked, with the Crosshair VI Hero managing it at 1.4V. That said, with the Crosshair, you do have access to power tweaker options, including VRM settings, which do make a big difference in such a situation. For high overclocks and extensive long-term load, that additional 10+2 power phase, combined with the VRM finned heatsinks and advanced EPS power setup, should make a substantial difference in keeping everything running smoothly.

The X470 Gaming 7 Wi-Fi is a premium board, at a reasonable price, with a massive feature set. For anyone looking to get into streaming, rendering, or more, it’s the brilliant combination of form and function. It’s not perfect, for sure—Gigabyte still needs to do a lot of work with its BIOS and overall software design—but it definitely falls into that “greater than the sum of its parts” mantra, and that’s something we can absolutely get behind.

This article was originally published in Maximum PC’s August issue. For more quality articles about all things PC hardware, you can subscribe to Maximum PC now.

Gigabyte Aorus X470 Gaming 7 Wi-Fi: Price Comparison

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Gigabyte Aorus X470 Gaming 7 Wi-Fi

It’s not perfect, for sure, but this definitely falls into that “greater than the sum of its parts” mantra, and that’s something we can absolutely get behind.

Brought into the fold for his innate ability to generate static electricity at will, Zak has an unhealthy obsession with motherboards and overclocking frequencies. Known for his acceptance of, and, poor taste in films, his favorite movies of all time are in fact, Pacific Rim, and 300: Rise of an Empire.

Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi Review

Verdict

The Aorus Gaming 7 has plenty of high-end features and a good basic specification, and it’s festooned with lighting options. It isn’t as fast as the Asus ROG Crosshair VII, though.

Pros

  • Plenty of lighting options
  • Solid, fast performance
  • Good slot and port selection

Cons

  • Not quite as quick as Asus
  • Still very expensive

Key Specifications

  • Review Price: £240
  • ATX form factor
  • AMD X470 chipset
  • AMD AM4 socket
  • 4 x 3600MHz DDR4, maximum 64GB
  • 3 x PCI-E x16, 2 x PCI-E x1
  • 7 x USB 3. 1, 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C, 2 x USB 2.0, 1 x Gigabit Ethernet, 1 x optical S/PDIF, 5 x audio
  • 2 x M.2, 6 x SATA 3

What is the Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi?

The Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi gaming motherboard is one of the most expensive new AMD-based models out there. At £240 it’s only £20 cheaper than the table-topping Asus Crosshair VII Hero.

It’s a lot to spend on a motherboard, though, so can it justify the price and keep up with its more expensive competition?

Related: Best Motherboard

Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi – Design and features

The Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi is one of the brightest and most eye-catching boards on the market. The rear I/O, CPU surround and bottom chipset are covered by large heatsinks, finished in multiple tones and with orange highlights.

Note too, that this board is covered with RGB LEDs. They can be found in the main heatsinks, and in the plastic that’s used to shield the audio circuitry. The top two PCI-E x16 slots are surrounded with lights, and bars of RGB LEDs are sandwiched between the four memory slots. There’s even a band of patterned plastic featuring even more lighting on the right-hand side of the board.

The board pairs its outrageous looks with numerous enthusiast features. At the top-right corner is a button to automatically overclock the CPU. Along the memory slots you’ll find a POST display and buttons to flick between two BIOSes. Those BIOS switches are good, but the Gigabyte doesn’t have on-board power and reset buttons such as the Asus. I’m also not keen on the sideways POST display – it just makes the characters trickier to read.

Get beyond the lights and the high-end features and the Gigabyte ticks all of the more conventional boxes. Its four memory slots support 64GB of 3,600MHz memory – just like the Asus Crosshair VII Hero – and its top two support dual graphics. There’s a third PCI-E x16 slot at the slower x4 speed. Like the Asus, there are two PCI-E x1 sockets too.

You get the conventional two M.2 connectors – both have heatsinks, unlike the pricier Asus – alongside six SATA connectors.

The Gigabyte has wireless internet, and both boards use the same ALC1220 audio codec. Gigabyte’s Gigabit Ethernet isn’t quite as beefy as the GamingFirst networking on the Asus, but that won’t make a difference to most people.

The backplate has seven USB 3.1 ports, which is plenty (but two fewer than the Asus), alongside a Type-C port. Elsewhere, there are five audio jacks, a Clear CMOS button and a power button, but no BIOS reset option.

Gigabyte’s board does have one extra on-board USB 3 header when compared to the Asus, and you’ve got eight fan and water-cooling connectors, which is fewer than the Asus, but still plenty.

Aside from that, you get seven different connectors for adding LED strips and RGB lighting, making it better-equipped in this regard than the Asus.

Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi – Performance

The Aorus board is £20 cheaper than the Asus model, and that translates to a marginal gap between the two in gaming benchmarks.

In the 3DMark: Time Spy and Fire Strike tests, the Gigabyte scored 4136 and 10,973 points with the Asus a couple of points faster in both benchmarks. In Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, the Gigabyte’s minimum frame rate was a little better but its average was slightly behind the Asus. In Rise of the Tomb Raider it was a couple of frames behind.

Taken in wider context, though, the X470 Aorus is a good performer. Those 3DMark scores are better than the majority of boards in this latest test group, and its real-world gaming results are solid.

It’s decent in CPU benchmarks too. Its Geekbench results were barely behind the Asus but still competitive with everything else here. A Cinebench score of 1405cb matches the Asus and is one of the best in the wider group.

Time Spy Fire Strike Cinebench (single-core / multi-core) Geekbench (single-core / multi-core) Power Draw (Idle / Peak)
Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero (Wi-Fi) 4137 10,997 176 / 1405 4807 / 22,137 67W / 127W
Asus ROG Strix X470-F Gaming 4128 10,988 177 / 1407 4733 / 21,839 62W / 140W
Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 4121 10,929 176 / 1335 4721 / 21,285 60W / 112W
Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi 4136 10,973 178 / 1405 4764 / 21,765 62W / 126W
MSI B350 PC Mate 4112 10,764 175 / 1341 4734 / 21,262 59W / 109
MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon 4105 10,793 177 / 1398 4872 / 22,146 60W / 136W
ASRock X470 Taichi 4126 10,894 176 / 1396 4803 / 22,115 64W / 129W
ASRock Fatal1ty X470 Gaming K4 4134 10,912 175 / 1379 4759 / 21,584 61W / 133W

The Gigabyte’s SSD and SATA scores are towards the top of our results tables, and it competed with the Asus in memory bandwidth. It also consumed a little less power than the Asus board.

Related: Best Gaming PC

Why buy the Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi?

The Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi doesn’t match the rival Asus board for pure performance, but it’s still one of the faster motherboards on the market – and it makes up for its marginal lack of speed in other departments.

It has virtually identical core features to the Asus, and both boards offer plenty of enthusiast kit. The Gigabyte board goes further with its lighting options, and it’s £20 cheaper than the Crosshair.

As ever, this is still an expensive board, so only invest if you’re sure that you’ll make use of all the features. Or, if you want to build a system that’s littered with RGB LEDs, then this is the best high-end option available.

Related: Best AMD Motherboard

Verdict

The Aorus Gaming 7 has plenty of high-end features and a good basic specification, and it’s brimming with lighting options. It’s a decent buy only if you’ll use all the features on offer, though.

Mike has worked as a technology journalist for more than a decade, writing for most of the UK’s most well-known websites and magazines. During his time writing about technology he’s developed obsessio…

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AMD 50th Anniversary Motherboard

3DNews Technologies and IT market. News motherboards Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi-50: ma…

The most interesting in the reviews


04/17/2019 [11:28],

Andrey Sozinov

Gigabyte also decided to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of AMD and prepared a new motherboard called X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi-50 on the occasion of this round date. Recall that on the occasion of the half-century anniversary, AMD itself will release a special version of the Ryzen 7 2700X processor, and Sapphire has prepared a special Radeon RX 590.

Externally, the X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi-50 motherboard is no different from the «regular» X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi motherboard. Is that on one of the small elements appeared the inscription «50». Much more significant changes have been made to the design of the package, on which a mention of the fiftieth anniversary of AMD appeared.

Left — X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi-50, right — X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi

The X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi-50 motherboard is based on the AMD X470 system logic and is designed to create advanced gaming systems on AMD processors in Socket AM4 . The novelty has a power subsystem with 10 + 2 phases, 4- and 8-pin auxiliary power connectors and rather large heatsinks with a heat pipe. Also, the new board offers four slots for DDR4 memory modules with a frequency of up to 3600 MHz and higher in overclocking. The X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi-50 expansion slot set includes three PCI Express 3.0 x16 and one PCI Express 3.0 x1 slots. There are a couple of M.2 slots and six SATA III ports for connecting storage devices.

The X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi-50 audio subsystem is based on the Realtek ALC1220-VB codec and the ES9118 Saber HiFi chip. A gigabit controller from Intel is responsible for wired network connections. As you might guess from the name, there is also a wireless module that supports Wi-Fi 802.11ac, as well as Bluetooth 5.0.

The rear panel has six USB 3.0 ports, one each of USB 3.1 Type-C and Type-A, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, a network port, and a set of audio jacks. There is also a power/reset button and a BIOS reset (Clear CMOS) button. And on the X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi-50 board itself for enthusiasts, Gigabyte placed a switch between BIOS chips, of which there are two, an “OC” button for automatic overclocking, and a pair of connectors for connecting temperature sensors. Not without a novelty and without customizable RGB-backlighting.

Gigabyte did not disclose the start date of sales and the cost of the motherboard X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi-50. However, AMD’s anniversary will take place on May 1, so the release of Gigabyte’s new product will most likely be timed to coincide with this date.

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GIGABYTE X470 AORUS Gaming 7 WIFI Review: Gaming Motherboard

Today I got a review of the top motherboard for true gamers GIGABYTE X470 AORUS Gaming 7 WIFI. Why did this some kind of fee brought to our portal? Yes, everything is simple — usually we tell all readers that, as a rule, computers do not have a built-in Wi-Fi adapter, and we send them to buy it. Here he is present! Moreover, everything is here.

i.e. Owners of this board do not need to worry about anything at all. Installed, stuck top-end hardware, and you can already conquer the expanses of game worlds. But is everything so simple? No! This board was obviously not created for budget pensioners…

Contents

  1. Cost
  2. Characteristics
  3. What do people say?
  4. Information from the manufacturer
  5. System test
  6. Ask the author of the article