Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming 2.0 … Review?

Conclusion

There has been a lot of behind the scenes things going on with the Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming. Having spotted so many problems with the original model we have been constantly liaising with our local Gigabyte contact to ensure that this revised model allowed the top of the line Gigabyte Z370 to flourish to the heights it should reach. We were assured that the issues noticed had been solved, the whole power phase element redesigned, that, in short, this was a new beast and worthy of an entire “two point oh” version.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect for us is the swiftness with which we identified a clear issue. It’s not like we’ve got a very specific set of circumstances and tested the motherboard far beyond what anyone could reasonably expect. You know how you can read forums dedicated to a particular game and people post about “horrific bugs” that only occur if you do something bizarre, hundreds of times over, whilst balancing a plate on your head, on a Tuesday, if you’re listening to EDM. Those are the type of flaws that no reasonable fault finding team will ever come across and we give no thought at all to the complaints of those people.

We aren’t asking the Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming 2.0 to do anything particularly out of the ordinary. We’re using easily obtainable applications that test certain capabilities of a product and give a result at the end which we can use to compare it to others of the breed. We don’t just randomly pick tests, but instead choose ones which are easy for our readers to get hold of and thus test their own particular systems against the results we show. Ones which can be repeated easily and consistently. It would be pointless to use something which only gives a result 50% of the time. We need absolute rock solid consistency for both ease of comparison and accuracy of results. Barring the odd glitch in the matrix it is something we attain. So given that we’re using easily available tools, not custom built ones, and ones which are known throughout the community as reliable and usable, we would have hoped that Gigabytes engineers might use some of the ones we do, if only because there are a limited number of products which conform to all those requirements.

All of which makes it the more annoying that we had barely scratched the surface of the AUG 2.0 before it became crystal clear that the flaws of the original hadn’t been fixed. Not remotely. Perhaps worst of all is the fact that even the safety procedures where the motherboard will automatically either throttle everything or shut down entirely to save your hardware seem to still not be in place. Gigabyte had set that to 105c on the original which once we had tested and informed them of the issues their answer was to just increase the limit to 125c. Sadly that limit is still in place on the V2.0. Now the Mosfets are rated for 125c but the issue is that the actual mosfets will be running 10-15c hotted than the probe will be reporting (the probe is on the motherboard not the actualy mosfet) It would be bad enough if it shut off all the time, but to merrily melt everything in a ten mile radius is a bit ridiculous.

The only possible scenario in which we could even cautiously recommend the Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming 2.0 is one in which you solely browse the internet, or perhaps use a single core or two at stock speeds. In short, that you don’t use all of it. For anyone else we would spurn it like we would spurn a rabid dog. Now we’re aware that this has been on the market for a while, and if you’ve already purchased one we’d seriously suggest returning it for an alternative. Nobody wants a ticking time bomb in their system, especially if you’re creating time sensitive content. We also want to make it clear that we’re not remotely suggesting that all Gigabyte motherboards are this problematic but there has been issues with a lot of their boards recently and we think its about time some people at HQ that clearly dont care about creating good products anymore or at very least ensure things are properly tested before putting them on sale got fired. Yes its that bad that we think several of the management at HQ from the product managers to the BIOS devs deserve to be fired.  You, the person reading this should not be able to buy a product with such a lackluster approach to the design and testing of a product that costs this much.

Take some time to watch the video and let us know your thoughts on the Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Ultra Gaming 2.0 on the OC3D Forums.