Gigabyte Debuts Six New Aorus Z370 Motherboards

Gigabyte revealed six new Aorus-branded motherboards that are ready for Intel’s 8^th generation desktop processors with minty-fresh Z370 chipsets onboard.

The new Gigabyte Aorus Ultra Gaming motherboards vary in features and connectivity, but all of them support the anticipated Intel Coffee Lake processors (and only 8^th generation processors) and have an ATX form factor with four DDR4 memory DIMM slots capable of supporting up to 64GB (4 x 16GB) of dual-channel RAM. Memory speeds differ between the top-end boards and the rest of the lineup; the Aorus Gaming 7 and Gaming 5 support up to DDR4-4133 (O.C.), but the remaining Z370 offerings support up to DDR4-4000 (O.C.).

The Z370 Aorus Gaming motherboards all feature six SATA III (6Gbps) ports for storage (with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10) and optical drives. Most of the boards sport two M.2 interfaces, with both supporting PCIe 3.0 x 4 devices and one of them capable of housing SATA M.2 SSDs (although the type and connectivity varies between models). However, the top end of the product stack (the Gaming 7 and Gaming 5) feature three M.2 interfaces, with two of the ports supporting SATA drives (all three support PCIe 3.0 x4 devices). All of the Aorus Z370 motherboards are also Intel Optane Memory ready.

The PCIe connectivity of the new Aorus Z270 motherboards is varied, with four of the boards (Gaming 7, Gaming 5, Ultra Gaming, and Gaming Wifi) offering enough PCIe lanes for SLI or triple CrossFire setups. These boards all sport three PCIe x16 slots, with the top two slots splitting 16 lanes between them (x16 for single GPUs, x8/x8 for dual GPUs, x8/x8/x4 for triple-card setups). The other new Z270 motherboards (Gaming 3, Gaming K3) are aimed at a more budget-oriented gamer, dropping one of the x16 slots (for a total of only two) and allocating 16 lanes to just one of the slots, giving the second slot only 4 PCIe 3.0 lanes. Although this is still suitable for AMD Crossfire setups, SLI is out (you need at least two slots with 8 lanes each for dual-GPU Nvidia configurations).

Each of the new Aorus Z270 motherboards sport a healthy amount of USB connectivity, with all of them featuring a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C and Type-A port (one of each). The majority of the boards (Gaming 5, Gaming Ultra, Gaming 3, Gaming K3) also sport four USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports and two USB 2.0 ports. The Aorus Gaming 7 lacks the USB 2.0 ports, but it has five USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports. The Gaming Wifi motherboard also sheds the USB 2.0 back panel connections, but it bolsters its total connectivity with six USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports.

The display output options between the different motherboards are different, but there are three different combinations of ports across the lineup. The Gaming 7 and Gaming 5 both sport a DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 1.4 interface. The Gaming Ultra and Gaming K3 feature a DVI-D and an HDMI 1.4 port, and the Gaming 3 and Gaming Wi-Fi only have a single HDMI 1.4 output.

Networking interfaces also vary across the new Aorus Z370 motherboards. Both the Gaming 5 and Gaming Wi-Fi feature Intel gigabit LAN and Wireless AC 3165. The top-tier Gaming 7 features both Intel and Killer gigabit LAN (dual gigabit LAN), but it doesn’t have wireless connectivity. The Gaming 3 sports a Killer E2500 gigabit LAN port, and the Gaming K3 and Ultra Gaming each have a single Intel gigabit LAN port.

The new Aorus Gaming motherboards don’t stray too far from the previous chipset designs; the feature set is nearly identical to the Z270 predecessors, and the proprietary features (Ultra Durable PCIe and Memory Armor, RGB Fusion, for example) all remain a staple for the Aorus-branded boards.

There’s no word yet on pricing or when we’ll see the new Gigabyte Aorus Z370 motherboards, but we suspect that they’ll start hitting the market around October 5 to coincide with Intel’s CPU launch. We’d also wager that the new boards will fall into similar price points as its Z270 predecessors.