Conclusion
The Final Words
In the year 2017 motherboards are not "just" about performance and features anymore. No, aesthetics have become such a massive ingredient of the recipe that is to become your PC. The Aorus Gaming 5 series hits that sweet-spot. It it a near perfect balance of all the best in features that a Ryzen platform has to offer combined with exquisite looks. Performance is at roughly the same lavel as the competition as well, The one remark we could make is that we feel the Firmware could probably use a few more updates as tweaking is a bit harder compared to let's say the ASUS HERO. Then again, our memory was XMP support, e.g. we merely enabled the XMP profile and it was running at 3 GHz with proper timings and voltages. The Ryzen launch has been a bit of a mixed bag. The platform and processors have the potential to offer great value for money. It performs great, fantastic even in any application. Yet we cannot look away from the fact that game performance in the enthusiast range remains somewhat limited. Enthusiast cards and multi-GPU combinations can run into a CPU bound situation at lower resolutions. These processors still offer plenty of performance if you game at 2560x1440 or higher, or stick to a mid-range graphics card.
What Is Going On With CPU Bound Game Perf?
The theory right now is that there is a bandwidth challenge in-between the two CCXes (the Ryzen 7 processor has two CPU clusters each holding four cores and caches). These two CCXes communicate with each other over an interlink, and as is seems the bandwidth there is a limiting factor weirdly enough, just for CPU gaming. You can compensate, as that interlink is tied towards the frequency of the memory bus, thus faster memory helps. Ever since our first Ryzen review we already detected that Ryzen benefits from faster memory performance more then it should well that is the reason. So please get yourself at least 2,667 MHz memory. It will not solve the problem itself, but will surely help in game performance. BTW ALL our tests with Ryzen 7 processors have been performed at 2,667 or 3,000 MHz.
The Motherboard
Right back to the motherboard. I've already used the word here, but Gigabyte designed an exquisite X370 motherboard. It functions well and offers a wide feature set including dual-gigabit Ethernet jacks and proper audio. As always, the first thing you'd want to do if you purchase a motherboard with such a new platform and infrastructure is to be sure that you flash the latest firmware into this motherboard. This is also the main reason why we delayed our X370 reviews a bit, we wanted to give the board partners a few week for the X370 platform to mature. Gigabyte has a nice offering, it ain't cheap though isn't expensive either at € 239,- But yes it is a motherboard with very nice of features and options when looking at USB3.1, SATA ports, M2, the looks and functionality. Oh and also the RGB bling. That said, we have no doubt that with the new generation processors and chipsets there are bound to be a few motherboard firmware updates and fixes for smaller bugs. It comes with the territory. We quite honestly did not run into stuff that massively worried us. The motherboard used seems pretty well tuned, we had no stability issues but once you start to manually configure things in firmware, you can easily end up in a maze of impossibilities and improbabilities.
Power Consumption
If you choose Ryzen 7 1700, with eight cores you're fine. With this processor now fabbed at 14 nm FinFET the TDP sticks at a low 65 Watts and with the system at idle I was a little shocked, with a GeForce GTX 1080 installed / 16 GB memory / SSD and the X370 motherboard I hovered at just under 50 Watts. That's just great and that is testimony to the 14nm fabrication as smaller packages can do with less voltage. When we stressed the processor with a Prime 1,024M run we reach roughly 125 Watts, that's low enough for what it needs to be, but we do find it higher than expected. Overall though this is impressive to see. When we game we hover at ~250 Watts, but obviously that factor is dependant on the type of graphics card you use of course. So yeah, these are really good values with a many core product. No complaints here whatsoever.
Some performance tips
If you like to boost your performance, especially for gaming a hit here are a few Guru3 tips:
- Update your motherboard to the latest firmware BIOS.
- Make sure you have your memory at at least 2,667 MHz with CL16 - 2,133 MHz will hurt game performance.
- For best game performance, set your Windows energy per mode to HIGH.
- Tweak your processor, we reach 4.0 GHz on all cores on just air cooling - This is your biggest gain for game performance - but granted, this will eat more energy.
For the Ryzen 7 1700 we reach a stable 4.0 GHz at ALL cores on air and 4.1 with liquid cooling. The 100 Mhz is not going to make all the difference though. After that number things will start to get complicated though. The Ryzen 7 1700 is easy to overclock, with this Gigabyte board however you must increase the voltage modes manually. Then select your multiplier of choice and you are good to go.
The Conclusion
Honestly this Aorus Gaming 5 is a bit of a rough diamond. The rough part is the BIOS and the fact that tweaking is a bit harder to do compared to the competition. Once you have manually tweaked your processor, you will not look back though. You have seen the tweaking performance with the 329 USD Ryzen 7 1700, this processor is golden and will offer you pretty much the same amount of performance as the 499 Ryzen 7 1800X once you tweak it. So it is very hard for me to recommend the 1700X and 1800X. That difference in money is much better spend on your motherboard and higher frequency memory. Ryzen 5 is coming in April, six and four cores enabled processors with SMT at an even better price. Once again everything about AMD screams value, so if you can pick the more affordable processor. Gigabyte offers a lot of features with the AX70 Aorus Gaming 5 for € 235 / USD, you'll have more USB 3.1 ports then you could have hoped for, plenty of SATA connectors and that m.2 connector as well. This board also is SLI and Crossfire compatible. If you go down that multi-GPU route, then the cards will configure itself in x8 PCIe Gen 3.0 modus. That's plenty of bandwidth, but we would have liked to have seen more PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes on that Ryzen processor series, sure. The Aorus Gaming 5 is RGB LED configurable, and it looks great. In the BIOS you may configure it, however at this time that didn't work properly just yet. Go with the Windows application for configuration as it does look beautiful. As mentioned in all opthe reviews, on the DDR4 memory side of things everything for Ryzen is still a little rough. As such I loved the fact that XMP worked straight out of the box, I enabled it and the Corsair LPX memory was running 2,933 MHz at advertised timing and volatges, 100% stable.
We once again sorely miss AC WIFI and we also are wondering why the industry is not moved to CAT7 and 5 GBit compatible Ethernet jacks? My note to the industry is simple, it's time to move onwards to faster Ethernet you guys.
The motherboard otherwise feels stable thanks to a really quality build with proper components used. Whether or not Ryzen 5 or 7 is for you remains something only you can decide. This conclusion however is not about Ryzen but needs to be about the actual motherboard tested. As such I'll end where I start the AX370 Aorus Gaming 5 is a bit of a rough diamond. It is lovely in looks, features and baseline performance. You can tweak quite well, but that tweaking process feels a little more challenging compared to some other brands. It's a fantastic motherboard, and once you have your tweak stabilized, your memory up and running you will not look back. Well perhaps you do look back, as the Aorus Gaming 5 with its stunning looks is something you want to look at.
ATH +++
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