Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi Review: AM4 Grows Up

[Guest]

AMD is launching new 2nd Gen Ryzen processors, but the unsung hero is the X470 chipset. Does this Gigabyte board stand out among many competing mobos?

Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi Review: AM4 Grows Up : Read more

 

[serge.m]

What’s the go with the new Intel WiFi chip used here? Anything special about it?

 

[jhensjh]

Exactly which memory are you using for these tests? From the How We Test Page: "G.Skill still provides our test stand with two of their 2x8GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 TridentZ kits." Yet this same page provides a purchase link listed as "test hardware" For Gskill FlareX, a different product to my knowledge. And on the Benchmarks and & Rating page, your chart specifies HyperX Predatior 4x8GB, a Kingston product if I'm not mistaken.

 

[TheTerk]

RAM used in our X370 and X470 test bench is the F4-3200C14D-16GTZR kit. Flare-X RAM is used in our X399 test bench. Long long ago we tested with the HyperX DD4-3200MHz kit, which is probably why that chart referenced the kit.

Regardless, each of these kits would likely perform exceptionally well on this platform with the improvements to the design specifications listed by AMD. We can always try different kits in future reviews if that's something y'all want to see.

 

[cknobman]

I have an Arous Gaming 7 x370 motherboard and have issues flush mounting my 1080TI on the board because of that stupid cover they placed on it.

I see that cover on this board as well, were there issues mounting graphics cards?

 

[alextheblue]

Perhaps removing the 2nd M.2 slot in favor of additional SATA3 ports would better suit more builders, as the Gen2 M.2 is under-utilizing the interface.

There's already plenty of SATA ports for the vast majority. Don't take away the second M.2. Slower is fine for a secondary M.2, slower/bigger/cheaper (per GB).

 

[Gillerer]

Storage options are above average for the X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi, with 6 right-angled SATA3 connectors and access to two M.2 slots for smaller form-factor drives. The top M2A socket supports full PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe and SATA3 drives, while the M2B slot provides PCIe Gen2 x4 and SATA3 support. Gigabyte’s marketing material touts the board’s ability to support M.2 RAID arrays, but given the PCIe disparity on this mainstream platform, we won’t be expecting RAID performance that's possible with the X399 platform.

You can use the second PCIe 3.0 x16@x8 slot to add a second M.2 NVMe drive, and therefore have two connected directly to the CPU. I don't know whether using an adapter for two (or more, if using a PCIe switch chip) M.2 drives in the slot is possible - that would be something for reviewers to find out from the manufacturer and/or test.

 

[christopheabegg]

6 sata 3 are more that enough , sata3 is saturated with SSD . An upgrade to M2 is the way to performance and the availability of raid on M2 is the killer addition . SLI and crossfire are no longer officially supported (or as is) on future driver , the second graphic slot is questionable and could be filled with a 10Gbt 4 lane card .
The real problem of theses motherboards are :
the bling bling led stuff power consumption
the inadequate power regulator (good for nitrogen overclocking) you paid for over the top performance (perhaps for the dream of a 150W 2800X) .
the inadequate power FET radiator if the motherboard mounting is vertical (that's a classical case) 70% of the fins ares horizontal (likely inefficient) .

I prefer the gaming 5 with a little less over the top power delivery and less led bling , correctly oriented fins and same services .

 

[christopheabegg]

The Wifi chip is the latest ac Wave 2 spec with Bluetooth 5 that include MUMIMO dual band 160Mhz channel . You can achieve gigabit speed with the adequate Wave 2 router at 5m and alone . But think a chipo 5m CAT 5e cable do the same with less lag and better stability .

 

[bit_user]

In case anyone cares, this is currently Gigabyte's only X470 mobo that supports ECC RAM (in ECC mode). According to their website, that is. The reviewer could've mentioned that - it's right in the specs.

FWIW, MSI also makes one model that does (in this case, their lowest-end X470 board). And all of ASRock's X470 motherboards claim to, but only with a Ryzen Pro model (which doesn't really make sense, since normal Ryzens also support it).

Absent from the ECC party is ASUS. Not sure why, as they had a good implementation on an old Phenom II/AM2+-era 890 FX board I have. I plan to replace it with either this board or MSI's.

 

[bit_user]

6 sata 3 are more that enough , sata3 is saturated with SSD . An upgrade to M2 is the way to performance and the availability of raid on M2 is the killer addition .

I'm with Alex. SATA is still useful for HDD RAIDs, which is what I will use it for. And SATA SSDs are getting down to a price point where a home user can start thinking of putting them in a RAID-5 or RAID-6, although the speed of HDDs is fine for my bulk storage needs.

It's unfortunate that this board doesn't even have 2.5 Gbps Ethernet. I was really hoping we'd see that and 5 Gbps start appearing in high-end desktop boards. A single SATA SSD can saturate 5 Gbps, so it's not like the need isn't there. I would greatly have preferred that over wi fi, which I won't be using.

 

[ytzelf]

Does the PCIEX16 sensor reliably reports GPU temp? Interesting if we finally have a good way to base case fan speed on GPU temp. Also, do all fans have the "off" option? (Last item in the fan option list below the temp/fan% graph)

 

[bf4gs19056]

hello my cl 16 3200 mhz gskill rgb ram getting blue screen error with xmp motherboard x470 gaming 7 wifi bad amd

 

[bf4gs19056]

hello my cl 16 3200 mhz gskill rgb ram getting blue screen error with xmp motherboard x470 gaming 7 wifi

 

[TheTerk]

Thanks for all of the comments guys, it really helps! Sounds like 6 SATA is more than enough for most of y'all. My comments were mainly geared towards the simplicity of SATA connectors and the overall "fear" of the less widespread M.2 interface, especially with the large deficiency of Gen2 PCIe on this product.

Any features in particular that y'all want us to test out? I saw a video by Level1 Tech going into the StoreMI software and thought that might be interesting.

 

[jpe1701]

Mr. Soderstorm found in his MSI reviews that the Nahimic audio caused lower frame rates for the Talos principle, could that be what happened with the x370 krait?

 

[jpe1701]

I am psyched about precision boost overdrive and would love to hear more about it. Especially about how it pertains to x370 too. My x370 taichi has the settings in the bios since I upgraded for my 2700x but I'm waiting for official word before I play with it.

 

[gasolin]

I had problems today with THE mb, it wouldn't run ibt stable at very high,maximum with lates bios F4g, very hard to get it to finish maximum, graphic glitches,artifacts, freezing what so ever at 3.9ghz (ryzen 2600, stabel at 4.0ghz but NOT ibt) i managed to finish ibt x10 maximum,but it was an ugly ride