Gigabyte X399 Aorus Gaming 7 review - Introduction

Gigabyte X399 Aorus Gaming 7
A feature enhanced X399 motherboard

Recently AMD launched their mega-core Ryzen Threadripper processors and a new chipset to support these heavy duty processors. In this review we take the brilliant Gigabyte X399 Aorus Gaming 7 for a spin.

Threadripper processors do not only offer many CPU cores and threads, they also offer quad channel memory compatibility as well as 64 PCI-Express Generation 3.0 lanes on the processor alone. That last fact opens up a tremendous amount of possibilities for any motherboard manufacturer, as restrictions are lifted since there is plenty of bandwidth to work with. Well, leave it up-to Gigabyte to design something intricate and tasteful, they designed a motherboard that is going completely off the chart when we talk features. Triple M2 SSDs (full x4 PCie gen 3), a U2 connector, how about eight DIMM channels. You will spot many PCIE connectors, USB 3.1 ports as well as an abundance of storage options. 

This 16 cores and 32 threaded Threadripper ready motherboard shows once again that massive SP3/TR4 slot. You will spot three M.2 slots (I probably should say 2 open and visible, and one is located under the heatsink being shielded), there is Realtek ALC 1220 for audio and Gigabyte is embedding a Killer E2500 network NIC into the board and sure, RGB. The CPU can be powered by 8+4 pin power connectors. The board has five PCI-Express x16 slots and an array of OC buttons as well as a diagnostic POST LED. Since X399 will bring support of up-to 64 PCIe Gen3 lanes bringing anything and everything multi-GPU support multi-GPU into play, including full-on quad GPU support, the spacing on the mobo does support it. Unfortunately no Aquantia AQC-107 LAN chip can be spotted, a bit of a miss for such a high-end product, you'll get 2x2 MU-MIMO 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac + BT4.2. That AC Intel AC 8265 chip connection can get you can close to 1 Gbps. Audio is based on a Realtek 1220 Codec which then (can) gets optimized by software.  You'll spot extensive shields and heatsinks that mold the the board into a nice looking design. Well, all that and RGB LEDs on this € 379,- / 349 USD motherboard of course. But she is pretty, we'll have a lot to talk about. Let's head onwards into the review shall we?