Is Gigabyte’s Aorus X299 Gaming World’s First Kaby Lake-X-Specific Motherboard?
Gigabyte appears to be the first company out of the gate with a Kaby Lake-X-specific motherboard via its new Aorus X299 Gaming. The board's product page stated that it’s specifically designed to support only the quad-core Intel i7-7740X and i7-7640X processors.
As you may know, in the conclusion of our review of the Intel Core i7-7740X Kaby Lake-X processor, we found it hard to recommend that processor until Kaby Lake-X-specific motherboards came to market. At the time, it was difficult to advise purchasing an expensive, full-fledged X299 motherboard for a Kaby Lake-X processor that lacks integrated graphics and utilizes only half of the available PCI-E lanes. To top all that off, four of the motherboard’s eight DIMM slots would go unused. Thus, it’s easy to see why there just hasn’t been a compelling reason to purchase a Kaby Lake-X CPU. At least until now.
After weeks of waiting, Gigabyte has announced what could very well be the world’s first Kaby Lake-X-specific motherboard. You’ll notice that even though Gigabyte’s Aorus X299 Gaming is based on Intel’s X299 chipset, the motherboard is equipped with only four DDR4 DIMM slots. (And, while we’re on the subject of DIMM slots, this motherboard supports up to 64GB of dual-channel DDR4 operating at 4,133MHz.) The X299 Aorus Gaming supports three-way SLI or CrossFire graphics card configurations. Other features include dual M.2 slots, support for Intel's Optane Memory, eight SATA 6Gbps connectors, and high-performance multi-channel HD audio.
The Aorus X299 Gaming sports all the common features of the Aorus line of products, such as built-in temperature sensors, dedicated fan and water pump connectors, and hybrid fan headers. Gigabyte has also embedded RGB LEDs into the motherboard, and it offers a number of lighting effects controlled by the company’s RGB Fusion software. Aorus Gaming X299 motherboards have also been upgraded with Digital LED support that allows each LED (up to 300) to be digitally addressable. The company also bundles its Aorus motherboards with its Smart Fan 5 software, which gives you the ability to interchange fan headers to reflect different thermal sensors at different locations on the motherboard.
In the end, pricing will determine the success of a Kaby Lake-X-specific motherboard such as this. To that end, we reached out to Gigabyte for more information on pricing and availability.
| Gigabyte | X299 Aorus Gaming |
|---|---|
| Chipset | Intel X299 |
| Size | ATX |
| Memory | 4 x DDR4 up to 4,133MHz (OC) |
| Multi-GPU | 3x SLI, CrossFireX |
| PCI-E Slots | 1 x16 slots, running at x16 1 x16 slots, running at x8 1 x16 slot, running at x4 2 x1 slots |
| M.2 | 2 |
| SATA | 8 x SATA 6Gbps |
| Ethernet | Intel GbE LAN chip (10/100/1000 Mbit) |
| Audio | Realtek ALC1220 codec High Definition Audio 2/4/5.1/7.1-channel Support for S/PDIF Out |
| USB | 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A 10 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 |
| Price | TBD |
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Really, no. I see nothing here that appeals over Ryzen, especially when both NV/AMD are moving away from SLI/CF tech, and devs aren't bothering to optimise for such configs. A board specific to a chip that's for a socket which is supposed to also support CPUs with a lot more cores?? It's like the opposite end of the logic scale of daftness.
A lot of previews did show that the consumption of the 10+core units of Intel do overheat, throttle and get insanely hot on their VRMs and the auxiliary CPU power cables.
Tamalero, unless your not responding to jasonelmore, he's talking about kabylake-x (those odd 4 core cpu's). Not the skylake-x cpu's that range from 6 to 10 core's currently.
And those cpu's can do 5ghz on air. http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/75590-intel-kaby-lake-x-i7-7740x-review-18.html
No, the 7700k is incompatible with X299. Not only that You're better off with Z270 and a 7700k IMO. X299 is a waste of money for Kabylake X processors.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html You're still #2 in single thread, only the 7740x (slightly) above. Note that i7-4790K is #3, which made me happy about my 3-year-old Haswell system.
Gamers are still better of with a Z270 or Z370 system and putting the difference into a better GPU. 5 GHz doesn't help nearly as much as moving a notch or two up the GPU food chain.
What difference - either platform should cost exactly the same, which is the whole point of these KBLX-specific boards. These are not aimed at traditional HEDT buyers, obviously. Try to keep up, it's 2017, Intel has done a little more segmentation in their product lines (and blurred the lines a bit), but it's not really that confusing, not as some people make it out to be. I hope for more common sense and less drama...
Yes, a regular X299 board is expensive overkill for these quad cores at $250-500 - that's the whole point of this KBLX-specific board, you get a better CPU for the same money (or $10 more?)and nothing's wasted on extra memory slots/channels and PCIe slots/lanes, so the board should be as cheap as low-to-medium priced Z270 board. Why are people so confused by Intel's product segmentation these days? I understood the reason for every move they made, and predicted this board class from the first X299 article I read, and also predicted that 7740X would be Intel's top OC chip as soon as I heard it was a quad core on X299 (what other reason for putting it on X299?). Intel is as smart as ever, it's just fashionable now to troll every Intel post with misinformation and fake stats.
It's the newer games and drivers where SLI/CF usefulness is fading; dev support/effort is dwindling, and both NV/AMD aren't pushing it anymore. Mbd vendors are, but what for? This is being reinforced by the adoption of high frequency monitors, higher resolutions, etc., for which stuttering is a bigger annoyance.
SLI/CF are great for older games on older hw, but without any relevant hw makers or devs pushing it, the idea will fade ever more. Nutty part is, with them all trying to push VR, I don't know why they aren't going for using one GPU for each viewpoint, something which would allow for multiple users in the same scene and it would mean having more than two GPUs would have some purpose. Not exactly a new idea, SGI was doing this twenty years ago.
Ian.
With Coffee Lake on the horizon, and it requiring a new motherboard, will there be an x299 Coffee Lake X? If they can't make it work, which why would they be able to if they can't make the current socket compatible with Coffee Lake, then you will be buying a single generation motherboard for a fringe product. There isn't even the upgrade path to the i9 offerings.
As we've seen with Ryzen, Coffee Lake rumors, and i9, more cores seems to be the future, but this board locks you in to a platform that supports a max of 4c/8t, and with the prices being what they are in that segment it just isn't a good investment. It would make a lot more sense to release a lower cost x299 board with the majority of the features intact, including i9 support, and have an actual upgrade path to higher core counts.
If you plan on keeping your PC for 3+ years this makes SOME sense, but if you are an annual upgrade kinda person, stay away. We've hit a point where a quad core is minimum for any kind of performance tasks and hyperthreading only goes so far. It might last you for a while, but I don't see any kind of long term support in this niche, at least not the kind of support you will find on a mainstream platform or the larger i9 segment.