Update, 8/4/17, 7:05am PT: Added pricing and availability.
Original article, 8/3/17, 2pm PT:
Gigabyte is throwing its hat into the X399 ring with the announcement of its new X399 Aorus Gaming 7 motherboard. Built for AMD’s enormous Ryzen Threadripper processor, this motherboard not only brings X399-specific features to the table, but also has a few other tricks of its own.
The first thing that will catch your eye is the massive 4,094-pin TR4 LGA socket located directly between eight DIMM slots that support up to 128GB of DDR4 3,600MHz quad-channel memory. The X399 Aorus Gaming 7 motherboard supports four-way SLI or CrossFire graphics card configurations. It's also equipped with triple M.2 slots with thermal guards and PCI-E and memory slots reinforced with “Ultra Durable Armor.”
Enthusiast and water cooling aficionados alike will appreciate the fact that this motherboard has nine temperature sensors, two dedicated fan / water pump connectors, and a total of eight hybrid fan headers. Gigabyte bundles its Aorus motherboards with its Smart Fan 5 software, giving you the ability to interchange fan headers to reflect different thermal sensors at different locations on the motherboard.
If you’re a fan of RGB lighting, you’ll almost certainly appreciate the way Gigabyte has embedded RGB LEDs into just about every open slot on the motherboard. The company didn't stop there, either. The I/O shroud, audio cover, and the swappable overlay on the PCH heatsink are all capable of displaying 16.8 million colors and a number of lighting effects, all controlled by Gigabyte's RGB Fusion software. AORUS Gaming X399 motherboards have also been upgraded with Digital LED support that allows each LED (up to 300) to be digitally addressable.
You can preorder the X399 Aorus Gaming 7 at Newegg for $390, but it's not getting released until August 10. For now, when you buy one via Newegg, you get HyperX Cloud Stereo Gaming headset (usually $80) thrown in gratis.
| Gigabyte | X399 AORUS Gaming 7 |
|---|---|
| Size | ATX |
| Memory | 8 x DDR4 up to 3600+ (OC) |
| Multi-GPU | 4x SLI, CrossFireX |
| PCI-E Slots | 2 x16 slots, running at x16 2 x16 slots, running at x8 1 x16 slot, running at x4 |
| M.2 | 3 |
| SATA | 8 x SATA 6Gbps |
| Ethernet | Killer E2500 10/100/1000 MbDual Band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Bluetooth 4.2 |
| Audio | Realtek ALC1220 codecSupport for Sound BlasterX 720°High Definition Audio2/4/5.1/7.1-channelSupport for S/PDIF Out |
| USB | 1 x Gen2 (Type C) 4 x Gen1 (Type A)REAR1 x Gen2 (Type C) 1 x Gen2 (Type A) 8 x Gen1 (Type A) |
| Price | $390 |
