At Computex 2018, Gigabyte announced a new AMD B450 motherboard and teased an X399 motherboard that takes the TR4 platform to the extreme.
To The Xtreme!
The new X399 Aorus Xtreme is an E-ATX motherboard with 10+3 VRM power phases and a plethora of heavy-hitting features. The backside of the board has a massive backplate that protects the components, and the VRMs are cooled by full copper heatsinks with direct-touch heatpipes. The board is powered by dual 8-pin CPU connectors and a 6-pin plug for the PCIe lanes. The rear I/O shield is integrated to the board and sports a clear CMOS and power button. There are also three Ethernet ports--two Intel i210AT ports and a 10 GbE Aquantia LAN port.
The board features three M.2 interfaces that support both PCIe x4 and SATA SSDs, in addition to six SATA 6GB/s ports. All three of the M.2 slots are shielded with aluminum heatsinks, and all that excessive metal (backplate, M.2 shielding, copper VRM heatsinks) makes the board excessively heavy; it's certainly the heaviest motherboard we've ever lifted.
Gigabyte also significantly reduced the amount of RGB LED lighting on the board compared to previous Aorus models. Gone are the memory DIMM lights and 3D-printable light rods, and the new design is both elegant and edgy without an obnoxious amount of RGB LEDs. There's also a removable BIOS chip that the company said allows users to swap it out for a new one in the event of a critical failure, or if you need to upgrade the CPU but can't flash the BIOS with a previous gen CPU. This particular feature has been seen on other Aorus-branded motherboards before, but Gigabyte's statement implies that the X399 platform is due for a new series of Threadripper processors that may need an updated BIOS to run.
Full specifications, pricing, and availability of the new Gigabyte X399 Aorus Xtreme are currently unknown.
Some AM4 Love, Too
The company also debuted a new AMD B450 ATX motherboard called the B450 Aorus Pro WiFi. Full specifications aren't yet available, but we can see from our images that it sports two shielded M.2 slots and three PCIe x16 slots. The primary PCIe x16 slot features steel shielding to give GPUs more support, and the RGB lighting has also been significantly reduced. The AM4 socket supports the latest AMD Ryzen 2000-series processors, and the B450 will also sport a removable BIOS chip. However, further details including pricing and availability will come later.
