Gigabyte Aorus RGB M.2 512GB Review

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Drives are always the least impressive things to open, usually consisting of a simple cardboard box and plastic insert, but the Aorus RGB M.2 really pushes the boat out with a high quality box, shiny logo and high density foam on the inside. A premium product if ever there was one.

  
  

The bare nature of a lot of M.2 drives does somewhat clash with the sleek aesthetic of our modern motherboards, so it’s lovely to see such a gorgeous heat spreader on the Aorus. Even without the lighting effects it looks the business and feels like a premium item. It reminds us of the old Kingston Predator DT USB drive. Very shiny and metallic.

  

The Aorus RGB M.2 is by no means the only NVMe drive that has a simple sticker on it, it just is in huge contrast to the top heat spreader. If the heat spreader does well, why isn’t it on the bottom chip that just has a QR code sticker on it, and if it doesn’t do much, why is it there?

  

You can see what we mean above by the incredible amount of heat spreading on the top side and yet still two chips un-adorned on the underside. Naturally it’s difficult to put a heatsink on the underside and still have it fit in the flush M.2 sockets on our motherboards, so we’re not complaining so much as saying that the excellence of the top heat spreader highlights the normality of the underside.