Published: September 30, 2024 | Source: Gigabyte | Author: Tom Logan

Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Review

Conclusion

It would all too easy when you see as much hardware as we do to get a little sniffy about things. To forget that the number of people who can afford high end hardware is slender. Sure you might see a lot of it on Twitch streams or Instagram, but influencers getting stuff for free doesn’t make them representative of the average user. Steam stats are where the truth really is. We, by which we literally mean those of us on the OC3D team, have never been particularly flush.

All of which means that the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite might not have the glitz of its big brother the Aorus Master. It might not have the USB options either. In fact if you compare it to the Aorus Master by almost every measure it doesn’t come away covered in roses. But let’s ignore that for a moment. It’s an X870 motherboard, not even the full-fat X870E chipset. Nonetheless Gigabyte have given us three PCIe 5.0 M.2s. Plenty of future performance potential.

Speaking of performance, clearly all the newest AMD motherboards do well. The consistency of modern hardware is unbelievable. We came from a time when your choice of motherboard was dictated by performance alone. Now you can choose based upon aesthetics, or brand loyalty, or the pragmatism of pricing. We love the freedom that brings. Anyone over about 35 has definitely owned hardware or peripherals they didn’t like the look of but needed the features, or put up with lesser features for aesthetics. With the Aorus Elite you get good performance and low temperatures. All the rest is entirely down to you, your wallet and your aesthetic preferences. If you hate motherboards with shiny RGB this might be enough to tempt you.

With cool temperatures matching up to good performance, and high bandwidth options in all the important places, the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite wins our OC3D Gamers Choice Award.