Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master

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Gigabyte's X870E Aorus Master ($499) is one of the first motherboards released to feature AMD's cutting-edge X870E chipset. This chipset is oriented as a top-tier solution for games and overclocking enthusiasts. The X870E Aorus Master's overall features support this with a robust power system, excellent cooling, and several ease-of-use features that make building on and configuring the motherboard a breeze. Its price cements it in the upper echelon of motherboards, but the Master does plenty to justify that valuation, earning our Editors' Choice award for high-end AMD AM5 motherboards.

Design & Features: Understated Luxury

The Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master aesthetically is the customary black of most modern gaming boards. The heatsinks and rear I/O shroud help to make this ATX-form-factor board more aesthetically eye-catching by adding shades of gray in edgy streaks that run diagonally across the board. You'll also notice a disjointed swirling pattern that runs through Gigabyte’s Aorus logo. Powered off, that’s about it in terms of flair, but when powered on, the board also has an array of controllable RGB LEDs over the rear I/O shield that spells out "Aorus."

Gigabyte engineered the board with overclockers and gamers in mind, equipping it with a digital 8+8+2+2 phase power-regulation system. Each of the phases in the 8+8 portion of the power system is dedicated to the CPU cores, and these are rated to handle 110 amps of current, giving you plenty of headroom for pushing up voltages, so long as you can keep the power-delivery components cool. The motherboard has a small fan that mounts near the rear I/O shroud to blow air over the voltage regulator module (VRM) heatsinks for additional cooling.

Two of the remaining phases are rated for 80 amps of current and dedicated to the I/O die on the CPU. In particular, these feed the memory controller on the core and the integrated graphics processor (IGP). The last two are devoted to the PCI Express lanes coming off the CPU to ensure smooth communication with those devices. Memory support extends to 8,600MHz, though few memory kits can hit this lofty speed.

Audio & Networking Components

The audio controller Gigabyte employs on this motherboard is a Realtek ALC1220 audio codec, which handles the audio connections on both the front and rear I/O panels. This solution is dated but still commonly used due to its performance. It’s frequently advertised as having a signal-to-noise ratio of 120dB, suggesting audio from it should be relatively clean and noise-free. The controller is also partially segmented from the rest of the motherboard to help reduce noise.

The audio controller can technically support up to a 7.1 audio connection, but this motherboard can only support a dual-speaker configuration. This is because it has just two 3.5mm audio jacks on the rear I/O panel, one for a microphone and one for line out that supports left and right sound channels. Though not everyone takes full advantage of the sound hardware on motherboards, this design is disappointing as it prevents you from setting up an immersive 5.1 or 7.1 sound system. However, you'll find an S/PDIF connection on the rear I/O panel, which works to connect to an independent sound system.

Gigabyte placed a single wired network interface card on the X870E Aorus Master. The Realtek controller on this board supports data speeds up to 5Gbps, which should be sufficient for most home networks. The board also has a Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 QCNCM865 wireless controller with more impressive support for the latest wireless internet protocols. It also supports Bluetooth 5.1 and has an easy connection scheme for the Wi-Fi antenna that snaps on without the need to tighten the sometimes-finicky locking nuts on traditional antenna connections.

Port & Header Placement: Smart Stuff

Though specs typically get all the attention, placing ports and internal headers on a motherboard in a thoughtful way can profoundly improve the user experience. This is particularly true when essential ports like the CPU power connectors are set beside sharp VRM heatsinks. Fortunately, that's not an issue with this board. The CPU power connectors are set in a tight space that can be tough to access in some tight PC cases, but the corners of nearby heatsinks are rounded off to reduce the chance of an accidental cut or scratch.

The CPU fan headers are also often placed in challenging locations, but Gigabyte sets them far enough away from the RAM slots and VRM heatsinks that you shouldn’t have trouble accessing them. The same goes for the internal power button, which is set close by, and the "88"-style LED debug panel is also set near here, making it easy to read.

Most of the rest of the headers are set along the bottom edge of the motherboard and are relatively easy to access unless you have a massive graphics card installed. You'll also find a few more on the motherboard's right edge, including fan headers, the four SATA 3.0 connections, and a few USB headers. The most curious of these is an internal HDMI port, though this port didn’t give me an image out when I attempted to use it.

You'll find four M.2 slots on the X870E Aorus Master motherboard, all but one of which can support PCIe 5.0 speeds. The speed at which these slots operate will depend on your CPU (and, of course, the SSD in them). All Ryzen 9000 and Ryzen 7000 CPUs can run the primary M.2 slot with either a PCIe 5.0 x4 or x2 connection, depending on how you configure things. The second and third slots can also work the same way, as they feed off the host processor’s PCIe lanes. (This is also why these ports will only work in a PCIe 4.0 x4 configuration if you install a Ryzen 7000-series processor, as opposed to a 9000 series.) The fourth M.2 slot connects to the X870E chipset and is limited to PCIe 4.0 x4 speeds at best.

The fastest of these slots has a particularly large heatsink over it to help cool ultra-fast PCIe 5.0 drives. The other M.2 slots are all covered by a shared heatspreader overlaying the X870E chipset’s heatsink. The heatsink over the primary M.2 slot and the heatspreader over the rest of the M.2 slots are easy to remove and remount. They use a simple yet functional system with a spring-loaded latch that just needs to be rotated to remove or reattach the heatsinks.

You won't find any PCIe x1 slots on this motherboard; instead, the board includes three mechanical PCIe x16 slots. The topmost slot is also an electrical PCIe x16 slot with support for PCIe 5.0 with Ryzen 7000 and Ryzen 9000 processors or PCIe 4.0 with Ryzen 8000-series processors. The other two PCIe x16 slots are wired up to the chipset with the second slot configured as a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot and the bottom-most slot an electrical PCIe 3.0 x4 slot.

The Rear I/O Panel: Solid, But for the Sound

The new X870E chipset utilized on the X870E Aorus Master supports various connectivity options. In addition to working with the CPU to support the various M.2 and PCIe slots on the motherboard’s surface, the chipset supports a crowded rear I/O panel. USB ports are naturally the most prolific connections on the rear I/O panel, with a dozen ports in total.

Out of these ports, just two are Type-C, and these connect to an ASMedia USB4 controller, making them the fastest. The remaining ports are USB Type-A with two USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, and four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports. Aside from the USB ports, the RJ-45 port for the LAN controller, the antenna connection for the Wi-Fi, and the audio connections, Gigabyte includes an HDMI port for use with the integrated graphics built into the host CPU.

The motherboard also has two buttons on the rear I/O panel that can clear the BIOS settings and flash the BIOS to a new version without first booting up the computer.

BIOS: Fast, Responsive, a Little Quirky

When first trying to enter the BIOS, the motherboard loads into its Easy Mode menu. Some more-experienced users may not like this and prefer to skip straight to the Advanced Mode, but the initial Easy might better serve beginners.

After all, experienced users can jump into Advanced Mode, but less-experienced users could get lost in that mode's myriad options. You can make the most fundamental changes directly from Easy Mode, including enabling a memory profile, flashing the BIOS, selecting a boot device, and checking basic system information.

Gigabyte's Advanced Mode is relatively well laid out and should feel familiar to anyone with recent BIOS experience. I won’t go over all the options here, but suffice it to say: You'll find plenty here to fine-tune system performance in several different ways.

I did encounter one minor issue when flashing the BIOS. After flashing it using the Q-Flash tool from within the BIOS, the system would boot into a command-prompt-style interface. Initially, I thought this might be normal, as the instructions for updating the BIOS indicate this should happen, and it provides instructions for what to type in to continue.

However, no matter how often this repeated and the system rebooted, it would return to this command prompt until I quit it the last time, without flashing the BIOS again. This fixed the issue; I wouldn't hold this against the board as it's a minor oddity; just be aware of it should you run into it as well.

Verdict: A Satisfying Flagship Experience

We found scarce few negative takeaways from the Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master. Though the board could be cheaper than $499 (what couldn't be, right?), its price is quite competitive for the feature set and arguably lower than expected based on its build quality and feature set. Gigabyte's inclusion of various ease-of-use items, like the plug-in Wi-Fi-antenna design, the quick-release graphics-card lock, and the simple releases for the M.2 drives' heat spreaders make building up the motherboard or changing parts fast and painless. This also extends to the BIOS, which we found snappy and highly responsive.

We can't say with certainty that this is the best new motherboard with AMD's X870E chipset. To say that, we would need to have tested a bunch more of them, and as the chipset and motherboards were just released, that hasn't happened yet. Some competing boards likely have features this one may lack, like a 10Gbps wired network controller or Thunderbolt 4, but those items would also increase cost and may be of little value to some end users. The Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master is an exceptional motherboard, and while it may not be the definitive best-in-class quite yet, we can't imagine you having a bad experience with this board. Today, it wins our Editors' Choice award for high-end AMD AM5 ATX boards; in time, other flagship models may well, too.