Gigabyte X570 Aorus Ultra Motherboard Review: $300 Excellence

You can spend more and get extra features you may not use, but for around $300, this falcon board is very tough to beat, with lots of USB and three M.2 slots.

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(Image: © Gigabyte)

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We’ll be comparing the  Gigabyte X570 Aorus Ultra ($299.99) to the more expensive ASRock Phantom Gaming X ($349.99) and Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Hero Wi-Fi ($379.99).

The test systems are as close as we can get to running the same specifications. Though memory may be different brands, the speed and primary timings are the same, as well as the GPU. We use as an updated W10 64-bit OS (1903) with all threat mitigations applied.

Test System Components

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MotherboardRyzen 7 3700X
MemoryGSkill 2x8GB DDR4 3200 (F4-3200C16Q-32GTZRX) / GSkill 4x8GB DDR4 3600 (F4-3600C16Q-32GTZN)
GraphicsAsus ROG Strix RTX 2070
StorageToshiba RD400 (512GB)
CoolingCorsair H150i
PSUEVGA G3 750W
Operating SystemWindows 10 64-bit
SoundIntegrated HD audio
NetworkIntegrated Gigabit networking
Graphics DriverGeForce 431.36

Benchmark Settings

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Synthetic Benchmarks and SettingsRow 0 - Cell 1
PCMark 10Version 2.0.2115 64: Essentials, Productivity, Digital Content Creation, MS Office
3DMarkVersion 2.9.6631 64 Firestrike Extreme and Time Spy Default Presets
Cinebench R15Build RC184115DEMO OpenGL Benchmark - Single and Multi-threaded
Cinebench R20Version RBBENCHMARK281795 Open GL Benchmark - Single and Multi-threaded
Application Tests and SettingsRow 5 - Cell 1
LAME MP3Version SSE2_2019 Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s)
HandBrake CLIVersion: 1.2.2 Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x264 (light AVX) and x265 (heavy AVX)
Corona 1.4Version 1.4 Custom benchmark
7-ZipVersion 19.00 Integrated benchmark
Game Tests and SettingsRow 10 - Cell 1
Ashes of the Singularity: EscalationVersion 1.31.21360, High Preset - 1920 x 1080 / 2560 x 1440, Crazy Preset - 1920 x 1080 / 2560 x 1440
F1 20172017 Season, Abu Dhabi track, Rain, Medium Preset, Ultra-High Preset

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Joe Shields
Joe Shields
Motherboard Reviewer

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

7 Comments Comment from the forums
  • LordVile
    I actually don't get these stupidly expensive motherboards. The sub 200 X570 boards have PCIE 4, Dual BIOs, gigabit LAN along with a whole host of features you're never going to use. It's not like you're even going to OC a Zen 2 chip because letting it boost gives arguably better performance for less power and effort. My X570 ITX board has 2 m.2 NVME ports Wifi + Bluetooth + Intel gigabit LAN along with as many connectors as they could get away with in the form factor and it cost me £220 which includes the ITX tax. You can get excellent boards for far less than 300 and when you're spending that much on a board why not go for the near halo product which has the 10 gigabit LAN that you'll nevcer use along with all the other bells and whistles you'll read about, say cool and never use.
    Reply
  • svan71
    Gigabyte can't be excellent as their bios sucks and the hawk emblem thing really needs to go.
    Reply
  • themike
    I have this motherboard … features are great for sure … but the sleep issue (computer just crash) is very wrong. It is a problem with Gigabyte X570 motherboards at large, google it, there is a huge thread of people all reporting the same problem.

    I hate how reviews very rarely talks about issues.
    Reply
  • djgxp
    LordVile said:
    I actually don't get these stupidly expensive motherboards. The sub 200 X570 boards have PCIE 4, Dual BIOs, gigabit LAN along with a whole host of features you're never going to use. It's not like you're even going to OC a Zen 2 chip because letting it boost gives arguably better performance for less power and effort. My X570 ITX board has 2 m.2 NVME ports Wifi + Bluetooth + Intel gigabit LAN along with as many connectors as they could get away with in the form factor and it cost me £220 which includes the ITX tax. You can get excellent boards for far less than 300 and when you're spending that much on a board why not go for the near halo product which has the 10 gigabit LAN that you'll nevcer use along with all the other bells and whistles you'll read about, say cool and never use.

    Yes I agree with you, it's really too much expensive for a motherboard !
    But for the 10 gigabit LAN, I hope one day it will be used ! ;)
    In France "Free" has the 10gbps optical fiber available for a lot of people now.
    Reply
  • LordVile
    djgxp said:
    Yes I agree with you, it's really too much expensive for a motherboard !
    But for the 10 gigabit LAN, I hope one day it will be used ! ;)
    In France "Free" has the 10gbps optical fiber available for a lot of people now.
    But it’s a while away yet an even then unless you’re constantly downloading massive files you don’t really need more than 2.5.
    Reply
  • slidai
    I am looking at this board for my build. I have one question, can the heat-sink on the M.2 drives be removed so you can put, say, an M.2 drive with a heat-sink of its own like the Corsair has?
    Reply
  • cyberguy
    I have one of these motherboards too and was sucked in due to an inaccuracy in all reviews I have seen of this motherboard, including this one. In particular having three M.2 PCIe v4.0 x4 slots. As someone that uses 4x M.2 drives in his X399-based 1st-gen threadripper system I was excited to see that I could move my M.2 drive set over to the X570-Ryzen 3950X with no loss of drive performance... Wrong!!!
    Look closely at the user manual that comes with these boards and you will find the 3rd M.2. (PCIE_M2C) slot and you will see it only supports up to M.2 PCIe v4.0 x2.

    This unfortunately is an inaccuracy shared across many reviews of motherboards having a x570/3rd gen Ryzen configuration. You would think that this would be one of the first things caught in reviews of this chipset + processor combo.

    At least there will be only one drive I have top accept this drop in performance since the PCIE x4 slot is usable for the 4th M.2's adapter card. Good thing I only run a few SATA HDD & SSD drives.

    @slidai Yes you can use the M.2 slots without heatsinks. Beware the closeness of the M.2 C slot though - it is pretty close to the CPU socket and might interfere with some CPU cooling solutions (I have an AM4 +TR4 compatible water block that won't fit because of it).

    On Motherboard quality... A $300+ USD that doesn't have a diagnostic LED readout or reset/on-off buttons onboard? Seriously? Jeez!
    Reply