The Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming, coming in at $183.99CAD is it worth your hard earned?
Key Features:
- Supports AMD Ryzen™ 2nd Generation/ Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics/ Athlon™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics/ Ryzen™ 1st Generation/ 7th Generation A-series/ Athlon X4 Processors
- Dual Channel Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 4 DIMMs
- 8+3 Phase Hybrid Digital PWM Design
- 2-Way CrossFire/ SLI Graphics Support with Dual Armor and Ultra Durable™ Design
- ALC1220-VB Enhance 114dB(Rear)/ 110dB(Front) SNR in Microphone with WIMA Audio Capacitors
- Dual Ultra-Fast M.2 with NVMe PCIe X4 with One Thermal Guard
- RGB FUSION 2.0 with Multi-zone LED Light Show Design, Supports Digital LED & RGB LED Strips
- Intel® Ethernet LAN with cFOS Speed Internet Accelerator
- USB DAC-UP 2 with Adjustable Voltage
- Anti-Sulfur Resistors Design
- Ultra Durable™ 25KV ESD and 15KV Surge LAN Protection
- CEC 2019 Ready, Save Power with a Simple Click
Internal I/O Connectors
- 1 x 24-pin ATX main power connector
- 1 x 8-pin ATX 12V power connector
- 1 x CPU fan header
- 1 x water cooling CPU fan header
- 4 x system fan headers
- 2 x system fan/water cooling pump headers
- 2 x digital LED strip headers
- 2 x digital LED strip power select jumpers
- 1 x CPU cooler LED strip/RGB LED strip header
- 1 x RGB (RGBW) LED strip header
- 2 x M.2 Socket 3 connectors
- 6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
- 1 x front panel header
- 1 x front panel audio header
- 1 x S/PDIF Out header
- 1 x USB Type-C™ port, with USB 3.1 Gen 2 support
- 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 headers
- 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 headers
- 1 x Trusted Platform Module (TPM) header (2×6 pin, for the GC-TPM2.0_S module only)
- 1 x Clear CMOS jumper
- 1 x temperature sensor header
Rear I/O
- 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
- 4 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports
- 1 x USB Type-C™ port, with USB 3.1 Gen 2 support
- 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A port (red)
- 1 x HDMI port
- 1 x RJ-45 port
- 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
- 5 x audio jacks
StoreMI
• StoreMI Makes the PC experience fast, smooth and easy
• Optimizing computer responsiveness from system boot to application launch
• Offering SSD performance with HDD capacity at an affordable cost
• Quickly accessing key files by automatically learning users’ computing behaviors
The Good
The Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming, is a nice looking motherboard with improved Vcore and SOC heat sinks over the previous X370 generation. It also features a dual bios so that’s a plus at this price point. Another nice feature of the Aorus Ultra gaming is it comes with a really nice audio solution, especially for your headphones. I’m not an audiophile but I could hear a nice sound upgrade over some of the other motherboards I have tested. One other plus is the reinforced PCIe slots.
The Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming does have the option to adjust the BCLK so that’s another plus for this motherboard.
The Bad
On the Aorus X470 Ultra the dual bios is software controlled and doesn’t have a physical switch or even jumper pins. This can pose a problem when trying to get your overclock dialed in.
The VRM is advertised as an 8 phase VRM however in reality it’s no where near an 8 phase. Its not even a doubled 4 phase VRM, I guess that’s fine at this price point. I feel though that X470 boards should be better equipped for overclocking, since that is a big reason why people go the X470 route over B450.
Memory overclocking on the Gigabyte Aorus X470 Gaming is really bad as far as frequency is concerned. While tightening the memory timings is about average.
Another draw back to this board for overclockers is that the X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming dynamic Vcore only goes up to 0.300v. That could be an issue if you are trying to overclock a Ryzen 7 2700.
Final Thoughts on the Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming
This one is a bit weird for me. If you are planning on doing any heavy overclocking then you are better off looking elsewhere as there is better options at this price point. On the other hand if you are not planning on overclocking, you could drop down to the GIGABYTE B450 AORUS PRO-WIFI and benefit from the Dual Band 802.11 ac WI-FI. You will also have about 20 extra dollars in your pocket.