Gigabyte X399 Aorus Gaming 7 Motherboard Review: Threadripping In Style

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The Corsair Crystal Series 570X still houses our Threadripper test bed, and it pairs well with the Gigabyte X399 Aorus Gaming 7, as far as aesthetics are concerned. This previously reviewed chassis screams "sex appeal!" with tempered glass on four sides, as well as three prominent 120mm LED fans in front (with room for 360mm or 240mm radiators for liquid cooling). Since it is a review rig, we’ve been moving components in and out quite a bit, so the rubber pads for the glass standoffs have started to erode. Also, dust isn’t too much of a concern for us, but the case has plenty of gaps throughout at the glass joints, so keep a can of compressed air handy.

An Elgato HD60 Pro still lives comfortably in one of our PCIe x16 slots, waiting for the chance to stream some good PUBG, CS:GO, or general benchmark tests. As for the remaining components, there are no changes to our rig. Antec’s 1200W High Current power supply provides the juice to our Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming GPU and Ryzen Threadripper 1950X CPU. G.Skill provides the 32GB of DDR4-3200MHz RAM, and Toshiba still supports all of our motherboard reviewers with its 256GB RD400 M.2 NVMe drive. Fractal Design’s Celsius S36 360mm water cooler is placed on the intake side of our chassis to provide cooling for our 190W processor.

Test Hardware

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Benchmark Settings
Synthetic Benchmarks & Settings 
PCMark 8Version 2.7.613 Home, Creative, Work, Storage, Applications (Adobe & Microsoft)
SiSoftware SandraVersion 2016.03.22.21 CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Cryptography Memory Bandwidth
IometerVersion 1.1.0 4K Random Read, 4K Random Write 128K Sequential Read, 128K Sequential Write
Cinebench R15Build RC83328DEMO OpenGL Benchmark
CompuBenchVersion 1.5.8 Face Detection, Optical Flow, Ocean Surface, Ray Tracing
3D Tests & Settings 
3DMark 13Version 4.47.597.0 Test Set 1: Skydiver, 1920x1080, Default Preset Test Set 2: Firestrike, 1920x1080, Default Preset Test Set 3: Firestrike Extreme, 2560x1440 Default Preset
Application Tests & Settings 
HandBrake CLIVersion: 0.9.9 Sintel Open Movie Project 4.19GB 4K mkv to x265 mp4
LAME MP3Version 3.98.3 Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3 Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s)
Adobe After Effects CCRelease 2015.3.0 Version 13.8.0.144 PCMark-driven routine
Adobe Photoshop CCRelease 2015.5.0 20160603.r.88 x64 PCMark-driven routine (light and heavy)
Adobe InDesign CCRelease 2015.4 Build 11.4.0.90 x64 PCMark-driven routine
Adobe IllustratorRelease 2015.3.0 Version 20.0.0 (64-bit) PCMark-driven routine
BlenderVersion 2.68a BMW 27 CPU Render Benchmark BMW 27 GPU Render Benchmark
7-ZipVersion 16.02 THG-Workload (7.6GB) to .7z, command line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=9"
Game Tests & Settings 
Ashes of the Singularity: EscalationVersion 2.50.28527 High Preset - 1920x1080, Mid Shadow Quality, 1x MSAA Crazy Preset - 1920x1080, High Shadow Quality, 2x MSAA High Preset - 3840x2160, Mid Shadow Quality, 1x MSAA Crazy Preset - 3840x2160, High Shadow Quality, 2x MSAA
F1 20152015 Season, Abu Dhabi Track, Rain 1920x1080 - Ultra High Preset, 16x AF 3840x2160 - Ultra High Preset, 16x AF
Metro Last Light ReduxVersion 3.00 x64 High Quality, 1920x1080, High Tesselation Very High Quality, 1920x1080, Very High Tesselation High Quality, 3840x2160, High Tesselation Very High Quality, 3840x2160, Very High Tesselation
The Talos PrincipleVersion 301136 1920x1080 - High Preset, High Quality, High Tesselation, 4x AF 1920x1080 - Ultra Preset, Very High Quality, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF 3840x2160 - High Preset, High Quality, High Tesselation, 4x AF 3840x2160 - Ultra Preset, Very High Quality, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF

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  • Snipergod87
    No 10Gb ethernet on this board? Not worth it.
    Its not like it is short of PCI-Express Lanes
    Reply
  • spdragoo
    20937832 said:
    No 10Gb ethernet on this board? Not worth it.
    Its not like it is short of PCI-Express Lanes

    Why? Even among the rarified crowd that this board would be geared towards, how many of them actually would have a 10Gbps connection (network or Internet) to even require it?
    Reply
  • Snipergod87
    20938100 said:
    20937832 said:
    No 10Gb ethernet on this board? Not worth it.
    Its not like it is short of PCI-Express Lanes

    Why? Even among the rarified crowd that this board would be geared towards, how many of them actually would have a 10Gbps connection (network or Internet) to even require it?

    Maybe so but it is becoming more of a standard on high end chipsets like X299, I myself have a 16 port 10Gbe switch at home so lacking a 10Gb nic would mean I would have to purchase one since the onboard 1Gbit nic would be useless for me.

    Platforms like Threadipper X399 and X299 are often used like workstations, like in a business, if editing and manipulating large images, videos or running virtual machines, you would want a high end NIC to handle the bandwidth.

    99% of people gaming will be on Ryzen or Mainstream i5, i7, not HEDT X299 and X399
    Reply
  • pensive69
    quote extremetech => '...NAS vendors such as Synology and QNAP allow upgrades to 10-Gigabit ...'

    i imagine any gamer who needs or uses storage might find it sweet.
    Reply
  • pavel.mateja
    Be aware of Gigabyte support for this particular board: http://forum.gigabyte.us/thread/1767/x399-beta-bios-thread
    Reply
  • echofightr
    I have this Motherboard and i have no issues at all, it is a great board and real easy to navigate the BIOS. I made sure the BIOS was updated before doing anything major. Downside it does not have the 10GB LAN port like the ASUS board but none the less it is still a great board.
    Reply
  • test_purch1
    Test Automation comment 1527248527823
    Reply