Gigabyte B660M Aorus Pro AX DDR4 Review: Frugal Falcon?

Firmware

Gigabyte’s B660 firmware looks no different than on pricier Z690 boards, except it excludes processor overclocking functionality. The BIOS starts in an informational EZ Mode that displays system information with limited functionality. You can enable XMP profiles from here, access Smart Fan 6 for fan control, use Q-Flash to update the BIOS, or enter Advanced Mode. When working in the Advanced portion of the BIOS, major headers are listed across the top, with sub-headings below. Page up/down functionality has finally been added in some capacity, and the BIOS is easy to read and well organized to help find what you’re looking for.

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Software

On the software side of things, Gigabyte’s primary tool is the App Center. This application is a central repository for all board-centric applications, some Windows settings, and other third-party software. Simply click to download the applications you want, install them, and an icon shows up on the screen. We installed @BIOS (BIOS flashing utility), Easy Tune (overclocking/system tweaking), RGB Fusion 2.0 (to control RGB lighting) and SIV (for system monitoring). The Gigabyte website has many other helpful applications, including USB charging (to control power to ports), LAN, and more that aren’t covered here. Overall, we like App Center’s small footprint and found its modular tools helpful.

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Test System / Comparison Products

We’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 64-bit OS with all updates applied. We kept the same Asus TUF RTX 3070 video card from our previous testing platforms but updated the driver to version 496.13. Additionally, our game selection has been updated, as noted in the table below. We use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware we used is as follows:

Test System Components

EVGA supplied our Supernova 850W P6 power supply (appropriately sized and more efficient than the outgoing 1.2KW monster we used) for our test systems, and G.Skill sent us a DDR5-5600 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK) memory kit for launch day testing.

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Benchmark Settings

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