The AORUS brand has currently 5 different motherboards in the line-up, all based on the high end Intel Z270 chipset, from the high end watercooling ready Gaming 8/9 versions, to the midrange Gaming 7 Non and K version and to end with the Gaming 5 non and K models. All boards are four dimmers, depending on the model, their sizes vary from  E-ATX to ATX form factor motherboards. It would be nice if Gigabyte would add a smaller mATX board in the pipeline to complete the existing range.

Without going to much in detail, the main difference is that the Gaming 9 is the only motherboard that can handle up to four graphics cards (talk about overkill). The rest of the AORUS line-up has got you covered with up to max 3 GPUs.

The Gaming 8 and 9 both feature either a Bitspower or EK Waterblock to cool down the "hot" VRM areas around the CPU socket.

HDMI 2.0 is only present on the two high end models, the rest feature the standard HDMI 1.4 Display Interface.

Audio wise the Gaming 9/8 and Gaming 7 feature a Creative Sound Blaster audio chip, the other models feature the sound from a basic ALC 1220 audio chip.

LAN is provided by either two Killer NICs for the Gaming 9, or a combination of the former with an Intel LAN controller. Only the Gaming K5 has a single LAN RJ45 port, so yes you guessed it the rest has 2 at your disposal. On-board Wireless connection by the Killer AC 1535 is reserved for the Gaming 8 and 9 models.

I'll leave you with a snippit from the AORUS website to explore more in detail the subtle differences between each motherboard (click to enlarge)

 

We have been using this motherboard in the Madshrimps lab for some months now, serving as our main testing platform for the Kaby Lake launch articles. The AORUS range is a nice evolution from the previous Gaming series by the Gigabyte brand, especially regarding aesthetics these boards are again a huge step forward. It all just looks more elegant and professional versus previous releases. One thing we have learned over the years that more and more attention goes out to how a board looks. Even for some this is way more crucial then the onboard specs,  to either buy or not this motherboard. A hardware purist could care less about how the board looks, though a number of compromises have been made to satisfy also the needs of the ever changing Gaming community.

 

 

One of the hot features is RGB, one of them trends from last year where most motherboard manufactures had almost no real innovations besides integrating the RGB function anywhere they could. This allows more customization by the end user by choosing different colors, blinking patterns. All this eye candy can either be controlled in the BIOS, by software in the Operating System or even via your favorite Smartphone. AORUS and CORSAIR have teamed up to allow the end user to also include the RGB control with the CORSAIR Vengeance RGB memory modules. Baptized as RGB Fusion it should allow for the most feature packed and fully lighting system on the market till date. And we must admit it is impressive how many settings one can adjust to make your PC light up the entire neighborhood. If you want to try it out, plz go to the following page and have a ball. Myself I just disable this madness as soon as possible in the bios.

 

 

Luckily for this old dog there is more to this motherboard than just some fancy RGB feature set. A 12-phase Digital Power design based on 4th gen. IRdigital power controllers and 3rd gen. PowIRstage ICs. A single 8 pin connector is provided at the top of the motherboard, no need for a dual version anyway for daily setups. In fact not even for them Extreme LN2 ready mobos. The marketing people will try to convince you otherwise, just nod your head and smile at them when they tell a 2 x 8 pins is better for your needs. To avoid corroded pins or bad contact all AORUS motherboards are equipped with a 15 microinch thick gold plated CPU socket.

 

 

The four memory slots are protected by what is labeled as Ultra Durable Memory Armor. A one piece of steel shield to prevent PCB distortion, twist plate bending to avoid any possible ESD interference. While many manufacturers have their own version of this I don't even see the whole point in all this besides adding one more thing to the spec list. Really PCB bending when installing memory DIMMS, must be a seriously flaw in your design or some serious end-user abuse involved. Rant aside, the AORUS Gaming series have been tested for XMP memory compatibility of more than a 1000 kits. Validation of 4133MHz and beyond has been validated, a bold claim that we will test on the next pages.

 

 

The 24 pin ATX Power connector is located at the usual position near the DIMM slots. The latter are of course RGB enhanced. Same as the little lexan plate which adds another nice RGB touch to the Gaming 7 motherboard. The OC Button, an ECO button and power on.off button are completed with a Reset and Clear CMOS button.The OC button loads the most optimized Gigabyte Overclocking configuration for your hardware. Our CPU ran at 4.7Ghz 1.3Vcore rock stable. While enabling the ECO button Power-Saving features are enabled to reduce overall power consumption.

On the left we find two USB 3.0 connectors for the front panel. Fan headers are positioned all over on this Gaming 7 board, in fact a whopping total of 8, from which two are read to handle 24W water pumps. For your monitoring pleasure 7 Temperature sensors are installed with an added two connectors for external monitoring; all this can be controlled and monitored via the included Smart Fan 5 software utility.

The IO panel of the AROUS Z270X-Gaming 7 features a PS/2 keyboard/mouse connector, two yellow DAC-UP 2 USB 3.1 ports, a HDMI 1.4a port and Display Port. Furthermore we find three USB 3.0 ports, USB 3.0 type-C (Thunderbolt 3)  and type-A port (red), Rivets Network Killer (E2500) and Intel GbE LAN RJ-45 ports (10/100/1000 Mbit) Teaming is not supported. Finally 5 gold plated audio jacks with S/PDIF optical ports hooked up to the Creative Core 3Di audio chip.

 

 

On the above picture we can spot upper right the Creative Sound Core3Di quad core audio solution. In the center we find the TI Burr Brown OPA2134 operational amplifier (upgradable), topped by Nichicon Gold electrolytic audio capacitors. Below the front audio panel connector we find the Audio Gain Control Switch (out jack for the back panel) to switch from 2.5x (default) to 6x gain. Below we can also spot the top BIOS Switch to use the main or backup BIOS. The SB Switch below is the Dual BIOS Switch. The LED_C is ready to power a standard 5050 RGB LED strip.

 

 

All AORUS boards support up to 3 way GPU configurations, only the Gaming 9 version is certified to handle 4 graphics cards.  Three PCI Express x16 slots are equipped with the Ultra Durable PCIe Armor, a one piece stainless steel shielding to increase the strength to support heavy graphics cards. The top PCIe x16 slot runs at  x16 with one GPU installed, the second one at maximum x8 and the 3rd PCIe x16 slots runs at x4 (PCIEX4). If one installs two graphic cards, the number of PCIe lanes are divided over the two PCIe slots, so x8/x8.

• single card mode: x16 / x0 / x0 
• dual card mode: x8 / x8 / x0
• triple card mode: x8 / x8 / x4

 

Three PCI Express x1 slots are foreseen for other add-on cards.

 

 

 

 

Time to look at the storage of the AORUS Z270X Gaming7, which as expected of a high end board does deliver.

• 2 x M.2 Socket 3 connectors
• 3 x SATA Express connectors
• 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors (SATA3 0~5)
• 1 x U.2 (for them blistering fast Intel 750 SSDs)

 

From left to right we spot the U.2 connector which supports one single U.2 device, 1x SATA Express, 2x SATA 6Gb/s and the double stack with 2x SATA Express and 4X SATA 6Gb/s connectors.

 

 

Two M.2 connectors are provided. One is positioned just below the CPU socket, supporting 2242/2260/2280 and 22110 versions. While the second one is located in between the two x16 PCIe slots supporting 2242/2260/2280 SATA and PCIe x2/x2 SSD models.

 

 

As mentioned all boards are based on the Z270 Intel chipset, allowing to max out the performance of your processor and memory.

 

 

 

 

 

Gigabyte has tweaked the Bios on all of their platforms to the same easy to use version shown below. Not an abundance of settings available as on some brands, but just the ones a normal end-user would really need. Even the tweaker will be nicely surprised. Voltages are limited for the die-hard extreme crowd, if you want to bench this board hard an Extreme bios is required.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even though this all sounds standard, memory compatibility remains an issue for many system builders during assembly of their customer's rigs. We tested a dozen of memory sticks on the Gaming 7 and all booted up fine with the provided XMP profile. We had no issues running the Galax Hall of Fame 4000MHz rated memory kit, though the G.Skill 4133 TridentZ kit was impossible to boot. Pretty normal for a four DIMM motherboard that the latter did not wanted to play properly, however why include it in the above snippet from the AORUS website? Ah those marketing people :)

 

 

Even tweaking the B-Die based G.Skill Trident Z memory to pretty tight timings of 13-13-13-28 at 3733MHz versus the stock rated 17-18-18-38 at 3600MHz was a no brainer on the AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard. Pretty solid stuff for a Gaming motherboard!

 

MadShrimps Test suite time, we will cover some basic 2D tests, afterwards throwing some 3D into the mix. Comparing the AORUS Gaming 7 versus some competitor models, sporting also different Intel chipsets.

While this might seem a bit unfair we are using the G.Skill Hynix MFR 3000MHz kit on all motherboards. Why you may ask? Just too highlight the limitations on the lower end, read non Z270 chipsets (H270 and B250 chipsets) as they don't allow high memory dividers. Bundling your setup with super fast memory is not always as beneficial as one thinks. Our findings in the Kaby Lake article have highlighted that 3000-3200MHz memory is plenty and worth the investment. Higher specced memory is reserved for the Tweakers and OCers. Nevertheless 3000MHz is a good testing basis as we cross checked with the people from Tones.be that this memory speed is one of their best sellers regarding memory kits.

 

 

Clear win for the Intel Z270 chipset, if you want a solid high-performance platform, especially if you are opting for a K CPU model and fast memory, bundle it with a Z270 chipset based motherboard and enjoy real performance. In SuperPI 32M, the AORUS Gaming 7 is not the fastest due to slightly looser sub-timings. Nothing that can't be fixed with a BIOS update or a bit of tweaking.

 

 

In all benchmarks that are boosted with the extra memory bandwidth, the Z270H and B250 chipset based motherboards don't stand a chance. Logic, as mentioned before it is a good idea to properly select your components with utter care to obtain a better balanced gaming rig.

 

 

 

Usually people talk about a good stress test for their daily setups or overclock. Well I have two favorites that provide a quick and pretty solid stability test for both the processor and memory. First one is Intel's XTU (Intel CPU only of course :p); second one is the RealBench benchmark. You can choose between either the ASUS Republic of Gamers or the HWBOT version. We used the HWBOT version to verify the performance differences between the motherboards, by using the HWBot version so we can compare performance easier at the HWBOT website. The ROG version is constantly updated so checking results between different versions becomes a tad more trickier.

 

 

RealBench features several open source software with the latest CPU extensions, where each would test a different part of the system:

• GIMP image editing

This focuses on single-threaded CPU performance and memory performance, therefore CPU clock speed and memory efficiency (timings + frequency) are the key to a good score. It uses up to SSE4.2 CPU extensions.

• HandBrake video compression.

This focuses on multi-threaded CPU and cache performance, therefore the more CPU threads, cache and clock speed you have the better the score. It uses up to AVX CPU extensions.

• LuxMark rendering

This focuses entirely on OpenCL performance. It will check for GPU accelerated OpenCL first, before defaulting to CPU if it isn’t present. It is also compatible with AMD’s upcoming hUMA between APU and GPU. It scales perfectly across all available resources, so the more OpenCL capable GPUs installed the better the score. OpenCL driver efficiency is also key to this test, with some components performing better than others. The test runs for a fixed period and is calculated on the sustained KSample/sec the system can generate.

• Heavy Multitasking

This test uses a combination of the above tests to simulate a heavy multitasking scenario that loads the entire system.

 

 

As you see most Z270 boards perform alike, with at some tests one brand grabbing the top spot, while on another test brand B is again on top.

 

Time to verify if the Gaming 7 graphics performance is up on the same level as the competitor's boards, Testing 3D synthetic or in a few game benchmarks.

 

 

In Futuremark's Firestrike Extreme we spot the same behaviour as in the 2D test suite. The Z270 boards are ahead of the lower specced boards in the PhysX test, this due to the higher used memory divider, Nevertheless the Radeon R290X is becoming a bottleneck for the overall's system performance as the total score hardly differs from setup to setup. Anyway a gamer will crank up the detail level to the maximum, either by auto configuration of the game or by manual detail tuning. Meaning the graphics card will mostly will be the bottleneck when running power hungry games, this even on a modern game PC.

 

 

 

Take note that all games listed are tested by using the integrated benchmark, no substantial difference. Only GTA V is 2 FPS faster on the Z270 platform than on the lower range models.

 

Three options to overclock your favorite Kaby Lake K skew processor, being it the Core i3-7350K, Core i5-7600K or the flagship Core i7-7700K. Non-K skew B-clocking is limited by Intel as it created a big stir on the previous Sky Lake platform.

OC button: Press the button on the board and enjoy a nice stable overclock , in case with our Core i7-7700K the Gaming set a nice 4800MHz clockspeed (on all cores) with a Vcore of 1.35volts. We ran the entire 2D benchmarks again without a single hickup, so indeed rock stable. Though depending on your processor the Vcore can be lowered for sure.

Since Kaby Lake was a better OCing CPU than the previous Sky Lake generation that magic daily 5GHz core speed became again a standard, similar speeds as with them amazing Sandy Bridge processors. Sadly after that processor generation the daily overclocks got lower and lower. Blame the Intel TIM between the die and IHS or not.

But back to the AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard -> iqn the BIOS the Gaming 7 board has several presets, we pulled out the big guns and opted to test the 5GHz one.

 

 

 

While our test CPU ran happily at the above settings, we fear that not all CPUs will cut it. Our biggest concern that we noticed some Vdroop/drop due to the Loadline configuration. Under load the CPU would get less than 1.3 Vcore to feed the crunching cores; a good CPU doesn't need that amount of Vcore, but lesser samples however might require more. Manually altering the Loadline to Turbo setting will allow to maintain more stable voltages.

We only tested BIOSes up to F4Q as we had to send the board back. It could be with the last feedback we provided this minor problem has again been addressed.

 

During testing we discovered that all of our non-K skew models were under-performing on the Gaming 7 motherboard, especially when not using all the cores, the turbo clocks didn't kick in accordingly. If one tends to use a non-K skew with any of the AORUS series, make sure you flash a bios later than the F4 ones. This just to warrant maximum performance out of your hardware.

The MadShrimps crew spend quite some good times with the AORUS Z270X Gaming 7, testing all Kaby Lake desktop processors and a huge quantity of DDR4 memory on it. The Gaming 7 withstood all of our stress tests without a single hiccup, after ironing out some performance issues (with the non-K models) with the Gigabyte BIOS team, allowed these Kaby Lake processors to run as good as on other motherboard solutions. Pretty logic you would say for a 240 euro motherboard! Well over the years as a reviewer and OCer we have seen boards struggling with all sorts of memory, producing weird BIOS issues,... Talk to technicians that assemble PCs in a shop, you might not even be ready to handle the truth.

The layout of the AORUS Gaming 7 is well organized, a clean CPU area, enough spacing between the PCIe slots for multi GPU configurations,...  This Gaming 7 board is feature rich and will satisfy the needs for a wide variety of end users. If RGB options and settings are high on your priority list, this AORUs board has got you covered for sure. Bundling forces with memory giant Corsair for RGB Fusion might be another decent selling point.

 

 

Connection wise the doubled LAN ports, one of which is Killer NIC based and the other one is the Intel GbE one. The latter always works and doesn't need any software tinkering to get good performance. After all these years I'm still not convinced about justifying the added costs of these Killer chips, but it is again one of them ticks in the box that most brands still opt for, nobody wants to be left behind...

Sound wise the AORUS Gaming 7 also deviates from the mainstream ALC solutions found on them cheaper boards. The far more powerful Creative on-board chip might not be the wet dream of audiophiles but it is a very solid solution.

Storage options are great too with dual M.2 slots, supporting various lengths. Too bad no extra cooling solution is provided as we spot with some other brands. The U.2 connection might be a tad overkill as hardly any gamer will  opt to install these over standard SSDs or M.2 ones.

The AORUS Gaming 7 is a feature rich board, on some parts maybe even overkill for casual gamers. Best of all is that one doesn't need to pay a premium prize for all this luxury. Performance is good and on par with most Z270 based motherboards. The numerous RGB options and the RGBW light strip header are a plus for those that want to go for full customization. The total of 8 Fan headers will be applauded by many cooling purists. The storage solutions are great and future proof. To sum it up if one opts to buy a high end motherboard to be the foundation of your new gaming rig, check out these AORUS solutions.

 

 

 

 

PROS:

• Dual M.2 slots
• Triple graphic card support
• RGB options & RGBW light strip header
• Creative sound chip
• Simplified Bios
• Memory compatibility
  

 

CONS:

• No added M.2 cooling

 

Thanks to Bernice and Gina for the Gaming 7 motherboard sample.