Conclusion

Final Words 

If you are looking for value, well, then the X470 Aorus Ultra Gaming offers a lot of it. Granted it was a really tiny notch slower overall compared to the expensive boards, but really that is incredibly small. Also for tweaking, you can still reach that high 4.3 GHz on air, yet it all feels a little more complicated to set up. Not the less, it works and gets the job done, not bad for 139 EUR/USD. 

The motherboard

I'll keep saying this, for 139 bucks this board offers heaps of value. A truly nice offering with some very nice features and options when looking at USB3.1, SATA ports, M2, the overall looks, and functionality. This board has LESS RGB bling, which the majority of this reader-base actually prefers. We quite did not run into stuff that worried us. The motherboard used feels pretty well tuned. Memory worked straight out of the box, we tried both the 3200 and 3400 MHz kits we have from G.Skill. Tweaking wise, the motherboards will not be any limitation, albeit getting that high end-result, is a bit more complicated to achieve with this board. 

Gaming performance

Previous Ryzen reviews have taught me that it is extremely hard to convince a big part of the guru3d community and reader base that Ryzen is plenty fast for gaming. The new Zen+ processors and the respective platform overall bring a bit more oomph compared to last years Ryzen. The fact remains, that if you take a Core i7 8700K it will still beat Ryzen in CPU bound gaming situations (low resolutions or extremely high refresh rate where a game is not GPU bound). The difference and gap towards Intel are getting smaller though. Get yourself a nice G.Skill FlareX memory kit at 3200 MHz and you've covered your gaming bases. Keep in mind that a CPU bottleneck always has been far less important compared to a GPU bottleneck, which why I'll keep saying it, that differential is trivial at best. Honestly, with the money you save on this processor compared directly to the cheapest eight-core Intel processor you can find, you probably should invest in a faster graphics cards. 

DDR4 Memory

The latest firmware for both the older 300 chipsets series and the new 400 Chipset series including the X470 have matured and is an accumulation of DDR4 memory support that evolved when the original Ryzen series was released. Memory compatibility should not and likely will not be an issue as long as you stick to recently released DIMMs. I'll keep repeating this, but there are some really good Ryzen optimized kits out there. The G.Skill Flare X series at 3200 MHz CL14 is hitting a nice sweet-spot and is 100% stable + optimized for your Ryzen infrastructure. We also tested the new Ryzen Sniper X optimized kit from G.Skill, it runs 3400 MHz straight out of the box and will bring your memory bandwidth in the 50K rangers. However, take my advice:  Flare X at 3200 MHz CL14. Install it, activate the profile in the BIOS, restart ...  and never look back. 

Energy efficiency

With this processor now fabbed at 12nm TDP now has risen towards 105 Watts, that is a bit steep. Realistically, does anyone really care? I doubt it. A full PC at idle will sit in the 55 Watt range with a dedicated graphics card installed (GeForce GTX 1080 / 16 GB memory / SSD and the motherboard). When we stressed the processors with a Prime 1024M run we reached roughly 188 Watts. A threaded CB15 run, however, reveals just over 200 Watts of power consumption (for the entire PC). That certainly is on the high side. When we game we hover at 270~280 Watts, but obviously that factor is dependant on the type of game and graphics card you use of course. So yeah, it's all a notch higher with the 2700X for sure, it's up to you whether or not this is a relevant thing for your purchasing choices. Remember, this is a fully locked & loaded eight-core and 16-threads processor. 

Conclusion

Value, plain and simple. For 139 USD/EURO, the Gigabyte X470 Aorus Ultra ticks the right boxes. It's a nice looking motherboard that comes with all the features X470 can offer + a little extra on USB 3.1/2.1, a heatsink cooled M2 slot and even a 2nd M.2. slot (albeit half speed). It supports all standard Ryzen compatible memory, I quickly tested the 3400 Mhz DDR4 G.Skill kit, that worked fine as well. Pair this board with perhaps a more value Ryzen gen2 proc like the 2600X and you'll build yourself a very affordable and capable gaming PC.  If you go down the multi-GPU route, then the cards will configure itself in x8 PCIe Gen 3.0 modus for two x16 slots. That's still plenty of bandwidth, but we would have liked to have seen more PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes on that Ryzen processor series, sure. Tweaking wise you get what you pay for, it is more difficult to tweak the proc on this board in the sense that the BIOs is a bit more complicated to deal with. Then again, you spend half an hour, keep that proc at your preferred and stable frequency, and probably never look back. We reached an all core 4300 MHz, albeit that was really pushing it with the stock air Wraith cooler, as such liquid cooling is recommended (if you are gonna tweak). Recommended yes, the price simply is sweet and offer great value.

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