Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi Review: AM4 Grows Up

Reviews
By
Published

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.

How We Test

Latest Videos FromTom's Hardware
17 Comments Comment from the forums
  • serge.m
    What’s the go with the new Intel WiFi chip used here? Anything special about it?
    Reply
  • jhensjh
    Exactly which memory are you using for these tests? From the How We Test Page: "G.Skill still provides our test stand with two of their 2x8GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 TridentZ kits." Yet this same page provides a purchase link listed as "test hardware" For Gskill FlareX, a different product to my knowledge. And on the Benchmarks and & Rating page, your chart specifies HyperX Predatior 4x8GB, a Kingston product if I'm not mistaken.
    Reply
  • TheTerk
    RAM used in our X370 and X470 test bench is the F4-3200C14D-16GTZR kit. Flare-X RAM is used in our X399 test bench. Long long ago we tested with the HyperX DD4-3200MHz kit, which is probably why that chart referenced the kit.

    Regardless, each of these kits would likely perform exceptionally well on this platform with the improvements to the design specifications listed by AMD. We can always try different kits in future reviews if that's something y'all want to see.
    Reply
  • cknobman
    I have an Arous Gaming 7 x370 motherboard and have issues flush mounting my 1080TI on the board because of that stupid cover they placed on it.

    I see that cover on this board as well, were there issues mounting graphics cards?
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    Perhaps removing the 2nd M.2 slot in favor of additional SATA3 ports would better suit more builders, as the Gen2 M.2 is under-utilizing the interface.
    There's already plenty of SATA ports for the vast majority. Don't take away the second M.2. Slower is fine for a secondary M.2, slower/bigger/cheaper (per GB).
    Reply
  • Gillerer
    Storage options are above average for the X470 Aorus Gaming 7 WiFi, with 6 right-angled SATA3 connectors and access to two M.2 slots for smaller form-factor drives. The top M2A socket supports full PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe and SATA3 drives, while the M2B slot provides PCIe Gen2 x4 and SATA3 support. Gigabyte’s marketing material touts the board’s ability to support M.2 RAID arrays, but given the PCIe disparity on this mainstream platform, we won’t be expecting RAID performance that's possible with the X399 platform.

    You can use the second PCIe 3.0 x16@x8 slot to add a second M.2 NVMe drive, and therefore have two connected directly to the CPU. I don't know whether using an adapter for two (or more, if using a PCIe switch chip) M.2 drives in the slot is possible - that would be something for reviewers to find out from the manufacturer and/or test.
    Reply
  • christopheabegg
    6 sata 3 are more that enough , sata3 is saturated with SSD . An upgrade to M2 is the way to performance and the availability of raid on M2 is the killer addition . SLI and crossfire are no longer officially supported (or as is) on future driver , the second graphic slot is questionable and could be filled with a 10Gbt 4 lane card .
    The real problem of theses motherboards are :
    the bling bling led stuff power consumption
    the inadequate power regulator (good for nitrogen overclocking) you paid for over the top performance (perhaps for the dream of a 150W 2800X) .
    the inadequate power FET radiator if the motherboard mounting is vertical (that's a classical case) 70% of the fins ares horizontal (likely inefficient) .

    I prefer the gaming 5 with a little less over the top power delivery and less led bling , correctly oriented fins and same services .
    Reply
  • christopheabegg
    The Wifi chip is the latest ac Wave 2 spec with Bluetooth 5 that include MUMIMO dual band 160Mhz channel . You can achieve gigabit speed with the adequate Wave 2 router at 5m and alone . But think a chipo 5m CAT 5e cable do the same with less lag and better stability .
    Reply
  • bit_user
    In case anyone cares, this is currently Gigabyte's only X470 mobo that supports ECC RAM (in ECC mode). According to their website, that is. The reviewer could've mentioned that - it's right in the specs.

    FWIW, MSI also makes one model that does (in this case, their lowest-end X470 board). And all of ASRock's X470 motherboards claim to, but only with a Ryzen Pro model (which doesn't really make sense, since normal Ryzens also support it).

    Absent from the ECC party is ASUS. Not sure why, as they had a good implementation on an old Phenom II/AM2+-era 890 FX board I have. I plan to replace it with either this board or MSI's.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    20906959 said:
    6 sata 3 are more that enough , sata3 is saturated with SSD . An upgrade to M2 is the way to performance and the availability of raid on M2 is the killer addition .
    I'm with Alex. SATA is still useful for HDD RAIDs, which is what I will use it for. And SATA SSDs are getting down to a price point where a home user can start thinking of putting them in a RAID-5 or RAID-6, although the speed of HDDs is fine for my bulk storage needs.

    It's unfortunate that this board doesn't even have 2.5 Gbps Ethernet. I was really hoping we'd see that and 5 Gbps start appearing in high-end desktop boards. A single SATA SSD can saturate 5 Gbps, so it's not like the need isn't there. I would greatly have preferred that over wi fi, which I won't be using.
    Reply