Final Thoughts
X570 motherboards are here and Gigabyte has stepped things up in a very big way! I think you’ll see this across the board when it comes to X570 motherboards. Intel will not have anything new likely till 2020 so motherboard manufacturers are really betting on X570 to keep profits up over the course of this year. That is why all of these boards seem to be on parity or are even better than their Z390 counterparts. It is nice to see this change, even when looking at X470 boards compared to Z390 boards the Z390 boards seems to just offer more. Now it really isn’t about what motherboards are better, but rather would you go AMD or Intel CPU-wise.
The Gigabyte X570 AORUS Master motherboard sits 2nd in Gigabyte’s X570 product stack and is loaded with features. If you are looking for a high-end X570 motherboard this is it! The first thing to note on this board is PCI-Express 4.0. Not only are you getting three PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots, but also three PCI-Express 4.0 M.2 slots, all of which come with heatsinks. We were able to test these M.2 slots with a PCI-Express 4.0 M.2 drive and they are plenty fast! Around 5000 MB/s read and 4800 MB/s write!
The next thing is Ethernet and WiFi on this board. On the Ethernet side you are getting dual NICs, one being 2.5 GbE and the other being 1 GbE. For WiFi you get Intel WiFi 6 802.11ax WiFi, which also comes with Bluetooth 5.0. So if you are plugging in or using WiFi it is going to be quite fast!
When it comes to power delivery this board uses a direct 14 (12+2) phase Infineon digital power design with IR 3556 PowIRstage MOSFETs which are capable of providing at least 50A of power from each phase, for a total of 700A. Using a direct phase design compared to a traditional parallel design is like using an 80PLUS Gold power supply instead of an 80PLUS Bronze power supply. Gigabtye has redesigned their VRM cooling as well, with new heatsinks that offer more surface area for better cooling. Gigabyte also provides dual 8-pin EPS connectors, more stable power delivery. With this we were able to overclock our Ryzen 9 3900X to 4.4 GHz on all 12 cores! For those doing overclocking there are also some nice features on this board. There are power and reset buttons right on the board, dip-switches to easy switch between different BIOS’s, and a POST code display.
You are also going to find one of the best audio solutions out there on this board with the ESS SABRE reference DAC ES9118 and the Realtek’s latest ALC1220 Codec. You of course get USB 3.1 gen 2 support with 4 ports on the rear I/O and an internal header for new cases that have an internal connector. There are also a total of seven fan headers on the board so you shouldn’t run out of fan headers to connect all of the fans in your system.
Gigabyte’s BIOS has been re-tooled and made to make finding settings easier and to put the right information in front of you. It is very easy to navigate and it is great to see Gigabyte making these changes. Gigabyte has a great motherboard companion software ecosystem too. Using the APP Center you can download all of these apps as well as all of your drivers and even BIOS updates. This saves you so much time! All you have to do is download the APP Center and it will download and install everything else. Other motherboard manufactures make you download every app and driver separately!
This is definitely one of the best X570 motherboard available and there really is not much we can say bad about it. Right now it is selling at our favorite online retailer for $359.99. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Gigabyte X570 AORUS Master Motherboard a 10 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!
Pros:
– Direct 14 phase VRM
– Triple PCI-Express 4.0 M.2 slots with heatsinks
– Great audio solution
– Refined VRM heatsinks
– Lots of tools for overclockers
– Re-tooled BIOS
– Great software support
– 7 fan headers
Cons:
– None that we found
