B450I aorus pro wifi review: Gigabyte B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi Review

18 января, 2023

Gigabyte B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi Review

Written by

Antony Leather

September 17, 2018 | 13:00

Tags: #am4 #b450 #mini-itx #motherboard #ryzen #wifi

Companies: #amd #aorus #gigabyte

1 — Gigabyte B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi Review2 — Test Setup3 — Content Creation4 — Gaming Performance5 — M.2 and SATA 6Gbps Performance6 — Audio Performance7 — Power Consumption8 — Overclocking, Performance Analysis, and Conclusion

Manufacturer: Gigabyte

UK price (as reviewed): £129.99 (inc. VAT)

US price (as reviewed): $119.99 (exc. tax)

While mini-ITX support on the X470 chipset is sorely lacking, nearly every motherboard manufacturer has something to offer when it comes to the cheaper B450 chipset, and Gigabyte’s effort here is the B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi. Immediately we’re struck by a much more premium looking board than the AB350N-Gaming WiFi, and indeed it sits under the Aorus brand rather than the more budget-focussed Gaming series.

The board features a fairly lowly 4+2 phase power delivery, and with fewer heatsinks than the B450 Aorus Pro, we’re likely looking at a board that will get pretty toasty with an overclocked eight-core Ryzen CPU — more on that later. There are a few other niggles with the specifications too that mean this is likely only going to appeal to low budgets.

There’s no USB 3.1 Type-C port, only a single M.2 port, and the pair of fan headers are going to leave you wanting if you have an all-in-one liquid cooler with a header-powered pump, fans, and several case fans. In fact, we can back up that claim by our need to fish out a fan splitter cable in order to power our AIO cooler and test bench fans at the same time. You expect fewer features on a mini-ITX motherboard, but we feel three headers is a minimum for a typical modern PC.

The lack of these features contrasts others on the board, oddly. For example, you get a very snazzy M.2 heatsink, which shaved 9°C off the load temperature of our Samsung 960 Evo — not the biggest drop we’ve seen, but on mini-ITX boards the top-mounted M.2 port is always in a cramped space between the DIMM slots and GPU so is rarely able to make use of any local or case airflow and maximise the benefits of the heatsink. The exception here is Asus’ recent ROG Strix boards that have a raised M.2 port, which does allow for better cooling. You also get Realtek ALC1220 audio — something Gigabyte seems keen to push with its mini-ITX boards despite the low price, as the AB350N-Gaming WiFi had it too, rather than dipping down to cheaper and worse codecs.

The M.2 port, thankfully, has the full range of support for the variety of SSDs out there and dishes out either PCIe 3.0 x4 or x2 bandwidth as well as supporting SATA 6Gbps M.2 SSDs, and beneath it is the single 16x PCIe slot that features Gigabyte’s Ultra Durable armour. Layout is pretty good too with all of the SATA ports located on the right side of the PCB, so there’s no need to thread them around or over the DIMM slots like there is on some mini-ITX boards.

RGB lighting is fairly restrained with the AB350N-Gaming WiFi with a row of LEDs under the right side of the PCB but nothing up top except a 3-pin addressable header for your own RGB LED strips. There are also no overclocking or testing tools — you’re left with just the standard two pins to clear the CMOS.

There does seem to be something unbalanced about the features on the board overall — the lowly power circuitry and pair of fan headers are in contrast not just to top-notch ALC1220-VB audio, Intel Gigabit LAN, and an M.2 heatsink, but also a trio of video outputs as well as onboard 802.11ac Wi-Fi, but it’s clear that paired with something like AMD’s Ryzen 5 2400G APU and its included air cooler, the B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi will feel much more at home than it would in a high-end mini-ITX gaming rig. You also get a reasonable six Type-A USB ports in total, with the four in addition to the two red USB 3.1 ports all being USB 3.0. The only other gripe we have is the set of audio outputs, which lack optical support and will also require the use of the onboard audio header to provide enough ports to power 7.1-channel speaker systems.

  • Chipset AMD B450
  • Form factor Mini-ITX
  • CPU support AMD Socket AM4
  • Memory support Dual-channel, two slots, max 32GB
  • Sound Eight-channel Realtek ALC 1220-VB
  • Networking 1x Intel Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5
  • Ports 1x M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 32Gbps/SATA 6Gbps (up to 2280), 4 x SATA 6Gbps, 2 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 6 x USB 3.0 (2 via headers), 1 x LAN, audio out, line in, mic,
  • Dimensions (mm)170 x 170
  • Extras Magnetic Wi-Fi aerial

1 — Gigabyte B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi Review2 — Test Setup3 — Content Creation4 — Gaming Performance5 — M. 2 and SATA 6Gbps Performance6 — Audio Performance7 — Power Consumption8 — Overclocking, Performance Analysis, and Conclusion

RELATED ARTICLES

Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Xtreme Review

Gigabyte goes all-out with one of the craziest boards for mainstream CPUs we’ve ever seen.

January 15, 2019 | 14:30

Gigabyte Z390 I Aorus Pro WiFi Review

Gigabyte aims for the mid-range with the latest in an excellent line of Intel mini-ITX motherboards

December 17, 2018 | 17:00

0

Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master

Can Gigabyte topple MSI’s excellent MEG Z390 Ace with its own super-premium Z390 board?

October 26, 2018 | 11:00

MSI MPG Velox 100R Chassis Review

October 14 2021 | 15:04

Gigabyte B450 I Aorus Pro Wifi Review « TOP NEW Review






Gigabyte’s B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi is aiming high, especially considering it uses AMD’s B450 chipset as opposed to X470. Thankfully, on mini-ITX boards at least, there’s next to no difference between the two chipsets, as there’s no space to make use of the additional features that the more expensive X470 chipset offers anyway.

Table of Contents

  • SPECIFICATIONS
  • Performance
  • Conclusion
  • VERDICT
  • Best Gigabyte B450 I Aorus Pro Wifi prices ?

However, Gigabyte has some stiff competition, as the B450 version of the Asus ROG Strix mini-ITX board retails. Gigabyte has certainly upped its game since its last AM4 mini-ITX effort though – the B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi looks and feels decidedly more premium than the last-generation B350N Gaming AC WiFi.

There’s a large VRM heatsink covering the 4+2 phase power circuitry, and you also get a large M.2 heatsink with the port beneath it supporting either 4x PCI-E 3 or SATA-based SSDs. The heatsink dropped the temperature of our Samsung 960 Evo by 9°C too, so it’s definitely worth putting it to use. There’s no second port, though, so adding extra storage will involve using of one of the four SATA 6Gbps ports, which are all handily located on the edge, next to the DIMM slots.

The rest of the PCB is fairly spartan, and there’s a severe lack of fan headers. There are just two fan headers on the PCB, so you’ll need to invest in some splitter cables if you need to power more than a single case fan. What’s more, header-powered, dual-fan all-in-one liquid coolers will be tricky to set up too.

SPECIFICATIONS

Chipset AMDB450

Update — 2022.12.24

CPU socket AMD Socket AM4

Memory support 2 slots: max 32GB DDR4 (up to 3200MHz)

Expansion slots One 16x PCI-E3

Sound 8-channel Realtek 1220 Networking Intel Gigabit LAN

Overclocking No base clock overclocking, max CPU multiplier 63x; max voltages: CPU 1.5V, RAM 2V

Ports 4 x SATA 6 Gbps (B450), 1xM.2, 4 x USB 3, 4 x USB 3.1 Type-A, 1 x LAN, 3 x surround audio out

Dimensions (mm) 170 x 170

The rear I/O panel also seems to be at odds with the PCB in terms of features, as it’s bristling with useful connectors. There’s on-board 802. 11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 support, six Type-A USB ports, including two USB 3.1 ports, and not a sign of USB 2 either.

There’s a trio of digital display outputs too, and an Intel-controlled LAN port. The only disappointment on the rear panel is that, despite the board sporting Realtek’s superb ALC1220 audio codec, there are only three audio outputs. There’s no optical output, and connecting a 7.1-channel speaker system will require using the case’s 3.5mm audio output via the on-board audio header. There’s little by way of lighting out of the box either, but there’s a row of RGB LEDs underneath the right side of the PCB, plus a single RGB header for LED strips.

The fan control section of the EFI is also excellent

Performance

We initially had issues firing up Gigabyte’s System Information Viewer Windows monitoring software, but these problems were fixed when Gigabyte sent us the B18.0522.1 update for it – you’ll need to do the same if you experience the same issues. However, Gigabyte’s EasyTune overclocking software worked fine.

The fan control section of the EFI is also excellent, making it even more of a shame that there are just two fan headers. The rest of the EFI could do with some improvements too; it looks dated compared with the competition, with typical overclocking settings often spread across several tabs, while the Precision Boost Overdrive controls are bizarrely located in the peripherals section.

Check Amazon

We managed to overclock our Ryzen 72700X to the usual 4.25 GHz frequency and, despite the lowly power circuitry, the board held up under sustained multi-threaded load for a good five minutes.

However, it eventually succumbed and the software revealed that extremely high VRM temperatures were the likely cause, with the CPU never topping 85°C. It was stable enough to pass all our benchmarks, but the B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi isn’t an ideal candidate for an overclocked 8-core CPU in multi-threaded tasks.

At stock speed, the system score of 196,474 was typical for an AM4 board using our Ryzen 2700X and our overclock saw this rise to 210,604 – again, similar to X470 boards we’ve tested.

The idle power consumption is a concern, though, and was a feature of many B450 boards we’ve tested, both at

A large VRM heatsink covers the 4+2 phase power circuitry next to the CPU socket

The Realtek ALC1220 audio sounds excellent, but it could do with more audio outputs

The hefty M.2 heatsink dropped the temperature of our Samsung 960 Evo by 9°C stock speed and when overclocked, and the load power draw numbers aren’t too clever either.

Thankfully, the audio performance was excellent, with noise and dynamic range levels of – 110 dBA and 111 dBA respectively. The board managed 3,392MB/sec and 1,871MB/sec read and write speeds with our Samsung 960 Evo M.2 SSD too. All in all, it performs on a par with an ATX AM4 board.

Conclusion

We had high hopes for the B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi – it looks great and has stand-out features such as 802. 11ac Wi-Fi, Realtek ALC1220 audio, an M.2 heatsink and large VRM heatsink. However, it’s let down by its EFI, a lack of VRM cooling and lowly CPU power circuitry that undoubtedly led to our CPU throttling back under load. There are also only three audio outputs, no optical output and just two fan headers.

Three fan headers is the bare minimum for a typical enthusiast motherboard, but as it stands, you’ll be left wanting if you use the B450 I Aorus Pro WiFi with any setup other than a single-fan CPU cooler and a single case fan. As a result, if you want to overclock your Ryzen CPU, the Asus ROG Strix B350-I Gaming or its X470 counterpart are your best bet while, for less cash, Gigabyte’s own AB350N- Gaming WiFi is a good choice for a budget mini-ITX system

at stock speed, although it doesn’t support AMD’s StoreMI technology, and you’ll need an EFI update to support the latest CPUs. Gigabyte has made some superb mini-ITX boards for Intel CPUs, making it a real shame to see this AM4 board fall short.

ANTONY LEATHER

VERDICT

7.7
Total Score

Gigabyte B450 I Aorus Pro Wifi Review

Decent performance and great audio, but it desperately needs more fan headers, and the EFI and VRM cooling need some attention too.

Add your review  |  Read reviews and comments

Best Gigabyte B450 I Aorus Pro Wifi prices ?

MORE DEALS

  • Check Price at Amazon