Aorus Z270X-Gaming 9 Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts
With the Z270X-Gaming 9 Gigabyte has put together what they think is the ultimate motherboard for gamers and enthusiasts a like. I think that they have accomplished that with this motherboard, remember it sits at the top of the Aorus Z270 product stack.

First lets talk about the gaming features. This is one of only a handful of Z270 motherboards that feature a PEX8747 chip to enable more PCI-Express lanes. So you can run two graphics cards at full x16 speeds and four graphics cards all at x8 speeds. You have the Killer Doubleshot-X3 Pro networking solution, which makes use of dual Killer E2500 Ethernet ports and Killer Wireless-AC 1535 WiFi. All three of these interfaces will work together for the best networking experience possible. Of course audio is important to gamers and this board has pretty much the highest Creative on-board audio solution available, the ZxRi, with the Creative Sound Core3D quad-core audio processor with Burr-Brown high end 127 dB DAC.

Enthusiasts will love this board as well. One of the main standout features is the EK-designed G-Frost Hybrid Water Block. Aorus has worked with EK Water Blocks to create this extreme hybrid water block with G1/4″ threaded fittings, to help enhance cooling of the CPU VRMs for increased stability and performance. So if you are running your own custom loop you’ll be able to connect right in to this block. You have dual U.2 and M.2 (PCIe 3.0 x4) connections so you can have the fastest storage available. There is also full Thunderbolt 3 support so you can easily daisy-chain devices together using a single connection.

No new product coming out in 2017 is complete without RGB LEDs. This motherboard is packed with them! There are a total of 9 sections on the motherboard that can be individually controlled. That does not include the RGB lights on the I/O shield and the two RGB headers! All of the LEDs on this board are easily controlled using the RGB Fusion software.

When it comes to overclocking I was able to bring our Core i7-7700K processor up from its stock 4.2 GHz all the way up to 4.9 GHz. I was really shooting for 5.0 GHz, but even at 1.4V Vcore our system was not stable. If we had more time I believe we would have been able to get to that 5.0 GHz mark.

The new BIOS that comes with this motherboard is very easy to navigate and is definitely not as confusing as the HD BIOS of the past. It gets the job done, but is not the best BIOS out there in our opinion. There are quite a lot of companion applications you can download for this motherboard, many of which are very useful. Again, for the life of me I do not understand why Gigabyte does not have packaged installer that has all of the applications together, it isn’t very fun installing 18 different applications.

With all of the features on this board you would expect it to have a high price tag and it does, right now it is selling at our favorite online retailer for $499.99. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Aorus Z270X-Gaming 9 Motherboard a 10 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!

Award 10 out of 10 Award Recommended

Pros:
– PEX8747 chip
– Killer Doubleshot-X3 Pro
– ZxRi 120dB+ Audio
– Dual M.2 and U.2
– Hybrid Water Block
– So much RGB!
– Thunderbolt 3

Cons:
– None that I found

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