Gigabyte B850 Aorus Elite Wifi 7 Review

Elite specifications, even from B850

Reviews
By published
Gigabyte B850 Aorus Elite Wifi 7
(Image: © Tom's Hardware)

Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Firmware

Gigabyte updated its BIOS on some X670 refresh boards, carrying that layout to X870 and now B850. The updated Easy Mode is laid out logically and displays plenty of information about the system, processor, RAM, fan speeds, and has several selectable options, including XMP profiles and RAM tweaks, Re-Size BAR support, Smart Fan 6 access, and more. The black background and white text familiar to the Aorus line is easy to read, while the orange accents on the Aorus line provide a much-needed visual update.

The Advanced mode also received a facelift. While all headings are still across the top, they are now larger ‘buttons’ and easily selectable with a mouse. The highlight bar (where you are on the page) is Aorus Orange and easy to see. Every option you need and want is at your fingertips, and you don’t have to drill down several layers to reach the most commonly used functions – especially if you populate your selections in the Favorites section.

Image 1 of 19
Gigabyte B850 Aorus Elite Wifi 7
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Software

Several months ago, Gigabyte released a new software suite called Gigabyte Control Center (GCC). GCC is a one-stop shop for controlling several functions, from RGB and Fan control to hardware monitoring and overclocking. It’s also helpful in finding, downloading, and installing driver updates for your system. It’s a simple application that does its job. It’s also a much cleaner tool than the previous App Center and gets our approval for the breadth of functionality it offers users.

Image 1 of 4
Gigabyte B850 Aorus Elite Wifi 7
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Test System / Comparison Products

We’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 (23H2) 64-bit OS with all updates applied as of late September 2024 (this includes the Branch Prediction Optimizations for AMD). Hardware-wise, we’ve updated the RAM kits (matching our Intel test system), cooling, storage, and video card. Unless otherwise noted, we use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public. Thanks to Asus for providing the RTX 4080 TUF graphics card and Crucial for the 2TB T705 SSDs. The hardware we used is as follows:

Test System Components

Swipe to scroll horizontally
CPUAMD Ryzen 9 9900X
CoolingArctic Liquid Freezer II 420
StorageCrucial 2TB T705 M.2 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD
RAMKingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 CL36 (KF560C36BBEAK2-32)
RAMTeamgroup T-Froce Delta DDR5-7200 CL34 (FF3D518G7200HC34ABK)
RAMKlevv Cras XR5 RGB DDR5-8000 (KD5AGUA80-80R380S)
GPUAsus TUF RTX 4080 16G
PSUEVGA Supernova 850W P6
SoftwareWindows 11 64-bit (23H2 - 22631.4169)
SoundIntegrated HD audio
NetworkIntegrated Networking (GbE to 10 GbE)
Graphics DriverGeForce 561.09

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Benchmark Settings

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Synthetic Benchmarks and SettingsRow 0 - Cell 1
ProcyonVersion 2.8.1352 64
Row 2 - Cell 0 Office 365, Video Editing (Premiere Pro 24.6.1), Photo Editing (Photoshop 25.1.2, Lightroom Classic 13.5.1)
3DMarkVersion 2.29.8294.0 64
Row 4 - Cell 0 Speed Way and Steel Nomad (Default)
Cinebench R24Version 2024.1.0
Row 6 - Cell 0 Open GL Rendering Benchmark - Single and Multi-threaded
BlenderVersion 4.2.0
Row 8 - Cell 0 Full benchmark (all 3 tests)
Application Tests and SettingsRow 9 - Cell 1
LAME MP3Version SSE2_2019
Row 11 - Cell 0 Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s)
HandBrake CLIVersion: 1.8.2
Row 13 - Cell 0 Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x264 (light AVX) and x265 (heavy AVX)
Corona 1.4Version 1.4
Row 15 - Cell 0 Custom benchmark
7-ZipVersion 24.08
Row 17 - Cell 0 Integrated benchmark (Command Line)
Game Tests and SettingsRow 18 - Cell 1
Cyberpunk 2077Ultra RT: - 1920 x 1080,  DLSS - Balanced
F1 2024Ultra High Preset - 1920 x 1080, 16xAF/TAA, Great Britain (Clear/Dry), FPS Counter ON

MORE: Best Motherboards

MORE: How To Choose A Motherboard

MORE: All Motherboard Content

Joe Shields
Joe Shields
Motherboard Reviewer

Joe Shields is a Freelance writer for Tom’s Hardware US. He reviews motherboards.

13 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Marlin1975
    Cons - Price
    I am looking at the B850s and some are as much or more than some X870 boards.
    Seems maybe they hope people will not cross shop. But many, most?, boards I see are priced to high IMO.
    Reply
  • snarfo67
    Last year I bought a Gigabyte motherboard (I'm usually a shameless ASUS shill) because it had all the features I wanted, no features I didn't want, and was priced well below the equivalent ASUS board. All was well until did a BIOS update, which disabled my Windows 11 activation. Lesson learned, back to ASUS.
    Reply
  • Loadedaxe
    snarfo67 said:
    Last year I bought a Gigabyte motherboard (I'm usually a shameless ASUS shill) because it had all the features I wanted, no features I didn't want, and was priced well below the equivalent ASUS board. All was well until did a BIOS update, which disabled my Windows 11 activation. Lesson learned, back to ASUS.
    That would have happened on a Asus board as well. It was a bug in Windows.
    There is a script you have to do in power shell to get it reactivated, to my knowledge MS has fixed it.
    Reply
  • StuWiFi6DDR5
    Loadedaxe said:
    That would have happened on a Asus board as well. It was a bug in Windows.
    There is a script you have to do in power shell to get it reactivated, to my knowledge MS has fixed it.
    They’ve been difficult for some time, BIOS issues, Windows 11 update issues, AMD not putting any XDNA, in the 9000 series, the 8000 series only having 16 tops, my M4 Mac mini 38 tops, my iPad mini 7 35 tops. Years back, pcie4 motherboard, pcie4 stick, old Ryzen 3 pcie4, but Ryzen 5, with graphics, no pcie 4, mind blown, you have to watch them like a hawk, which makes owner building, a chore, not a joy, like it used to be. A lot of us go for the mini computers, they come with the case, apu and motherboard integrated, power supply one plug, you have to get the ram, flash and boot media, but it’s still a lot less hassle.

    Buying something off the shelf, doesn’t give you the AI, unless you pay through the nose. Mac mini M4, $600, no hassle, but you have to wait for the software, I haven’t managed, to load a llm yet. They say lm studio, llama 2, but not yet.
    Reply
  • sverebom
    The details on the M.2-slots are wrong.

    According to the specs and the block diagram the first two M.2-slots connect to the CPU, only the third M.2-slot comes from the chipset .

    from top to bottom:
    M2A_CPU: PCIe 5.0 from the CPU
    M2B_CPU: PCIe 4.0 from the CPU
    M2C_SB: PCIe 4.0 from the Chipset/Southbridge
    Reply
  • StuWiFi6DDR5
    sverebom said:
    The details on the M.2-slots are wrong.

    According to the specs and the block diagram the first two M.2-slots connect to the CPU, only the third M.2-slot comes from the chipset .

    from top to bottom:
    M2A_CPU: PCIe 5.0 from the CPU
    M2B_CPU: PCIe 4.0 from the CPU
    M2C_SB: PCIe 4.0 from the Chipset/Southbridge
    Yup, gradually, pcie5, is getting into the motherboards and APUs, the 9000 series has pcie5, not the 8000 series, the 670 motherboards, often have pcie5, many of 850, 870 motherboards have pcie5. If I succeed, with a 670 motherboard, pcie5, will help with the llms, long and short term memory being crucial, speed, with the long term, speed and quantity being crucial, in the short term memory, I have 64 GB of ddr5, at 4.8GHz, only 8GB of GDDR6, at 12GHz. With a 7000 series graphics card, fingers crossed. So many things can go wrong, but I’ve ntfs formatted the pcie5 and created, the iso usb Windows 11 boot media.
    Reply
  • sverebom
    Don'T start with that please. We have been so close to having 1 PCIe 5.0 expansion and 2 PCIe 5.0 M.2-SSDs hooked to the CPU (all at max lanes), but then AMD had to insist on introducing USB 4.0 with the new chipsets, forcing the board partners to redistribute the available lanes in all kinds of weird ways (liker SSDs cannibalizing the GPU slot to find enough PCiE-Lanes).

    Sure PCIe 5.0 doesn't matter much yet, but for future proofing it would have been nice to have a somewhat affordable (sub 300 USD/Euros) platform that can do 95 percent of what Desktop-user and Gamers need in PCIe 5.0. It could have been so easy to have a fully PCIe 5.0 X870(E) version of the B850 Aorus Elite, but no, AMD needed a killer feature for X870(E) and now we have a plethora of mid-range X870(E) mainboards that all steal lanes from the primary expansion slot when you populate the second M.2-slot with an SSD for your games.
    Reply
  • StuWiFi6DDR5
    sverebom said:
    Don'T start with that please. We have been so close to having 1 PCIe 5.0 expansion and 2 PCIe 5.0 M.2-SSDs hooked to the CPU (all at max lanes), but then AMD had to insist on introducing USB 4.0 with the new chipsets, forcing the board partners to redistribute the available lanes in all kinds of weird ways (liker SSDs cannibalizing the GPU slot to find enough PCiE-Lanes).

    Sure PCIe 5.0 doesn't matter much yet, but for future proofing it would have been nice to have a somewhat affordable (sub 300 USD/Euros) platform that can do 95 percent of what Desktop-user and Gamers need in PCIe 5.0. It could have been so easy to have a fully PCIe 5.0 X870(E) version of the B850 Aorus Elite, but no, AMD needed a killer feature for X870(E) and now we have a plethora of mid-range X870(E) mainboards that all steal lanes from the primary expansion slot when you populate the second M.2-slot with an SSD for your games.
    Yes cannibalism, I got a PC, Windows 10, 16GB ddr4, i5 6th generation, this time, it didn't crash from windows update. 3 year old update, up to date security. But I still couldn't get the pcie 5, 7000 series graphics, 9000 series Ryzen 5 APU, 670 motherboard, to output, to the screen. So I'll have to fall back on a 8,000 series APU, 650 motherboard, PCIE 4, 540 graphics card, if I can even get that, to work.

    Maybe one day, I can cannibalise, the case and power supply, of the old PC, I have $A/C 3,000 worth, of components, gathering mould, in the cupboard. I'll have, to get a 800 series motherboard, to get over the BIOS problems with using a 9000 series APU. And PCIE 5, the mess, that's been the updates to Windows 11.
    Reply
  • Fox Tread33
    snarfo67 said:
    Last year I bought a Gigabyte motherboard (I'm usually a shameless ASUS shill) because it had all the features I wanted, no features I didn't want, and was priced well below the equivalent ASUS board. All was well until did a BIOS update, which disabled my Windows 11 activation. Lesson learned, back to ASUS.
    January 16, 2025 - Hi. Interestingly, it so happens that a couple of days ago.. I watched a JazTwoCents video on how to transfer a Windows License when you change out a major component on a Desktop PC. He talks about other stuff in the first half of the video, but finally gets to the point and shows how to do it. It did require a phone call to Microsoft. Which as I recall, was just answering a few questions on the automated system. Further, I have learned that when confronting a Tech problem of some sort. To do a search online for a solution. Most often, any Tech problem we have related to computers, others have had also. Meaning that quite often someone has posted help tips and/or videos on the subject. It took awhile for me to remember to do a search, before "pulling my hair out", trying to solve the problem by myself. I hope that helps. Stay well. :giggle:
    Reply
  • Fox Tread33
    January 16, 2025 - Hi. Interestingly, it so happens that a couple of days ago.. I watched a JazTwoCents video on how to transfer a Windows License when you change out a major component on a Desktop PC. He talks about other stuff in the first half of the video, but finally gets to the point and shows how to do it. It did require a phone call to Microsoft. Which as I recall, was just answering a few questions on the automated system. Further, I have learned that when confronting a Tech problem of some sort. To do a search online for a solution. Most often, any Tech problem we have related to computers, others have had also. Meaning that quite often someone has posted help tips and/or videos on the subject. It took awhile for me to remember to do a search, before "pulling my hair out", trying to solve the problem by myself.
    Reply