Thursday, August 22nd 2024
GIGABYTE Intros X870E AORUS Master Motherboard
GIGABYTE today debuted its AMD 800-series motherboards with the launch of the premium X870E AORUS Master. This will go on to be the company's second most premium product on this chipset, as the company is also planning the X870E AORUS Xtreme. The AORUS Master is still packed to the gills with everything this chipset has to offer, along with high-end onboard devices. The board is built in the ATX form-factor, and draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and two 8-pin EPS power connectors. It offers a 16+2+2 phase digital VRM featuring 110 A power stages. The board is laid out on a premium 8-layer PCB. You get tall extruded aluminium heatsinks for the CPU VRM, and the topmost M.2 NVMe Gen 5 slot.
The AMD Socket AM5 is wired to four DDR5 DIMM slots that support up to 192 GB of dual-channel DDR5, at speeds of over DDR5-8000. It also puts out no less than three M.2 NVMe Gen 5 slots. Two of these are wired to the dedicated x4 interfaces from the AMD "Raphael" or "Granite Ridge" processor, while one of them subtracts 4 lanes from the board's PCI-Express 5.0 x16 PEG slot. The board's fourth M.2 NVMe slot is Gen 4, and wired to the chipset. The only other expansion slots are a couple of PCI-Express 4.0 x16 (electrical Gen 4 x1). Besides the M.2 slots, you get four SATA 6 Gbps ports completing the board's storage connectivity.USB connectivity on the GIGABYTE X870E AORUS Master includes two 40 Gbps USB4 that include DisplayPort connectivity from the processor, four 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2, four 5 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1, a two 5 Gbps USB 3.2 ports via a header, and a 20 Gbps USB-C front-panel header. Networking interfaces includes a 5 Gbps Ethernet driven by a Realtek RTL8251B, and a Qualcomm QCNCM865 WLAN controller that provides Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3.
The board's onboard audio solution uses a Realtek ALC1220 CODEC with audiophile-grade capacitors. This CODEC, in our opinion, is preferrable to something like the ALC4080, since it uses the HDA bus, compared to the USB 3.0 bus of the newer CODEC, and is more resilient to audio glitches caused by kernel tick mistiming with certain GPUs.
The company didn't reveal pricing.
The AMD Socket AM5 is wired to four DDR5 DIMM slots that support up to 192 GB of dual-channel DDR5, at speeds of over DDR5-8000. It also puts out no less than three M.2 NVMe Gen 5 slots. Two of these are wired to the dedicated x4 interfaces from the AMD "Raphael" or "Granite Ridge" processor, while one of them subtracts 4 lanes from the board's PCI-Express 5.0 x16 PEG slot. The board's fourth M.2 NVMe slot is Gen 4, and wired to the chipset. The only other expansion slots are a couple of PCI-Express 4.0 x16 (electrical Gen 4 x1). Besides the M.2 slots, you get four SATA 6 Gbps ports completing the board's storage connectivity.USB connectivity on the GIGABYTE X870E AORUS Master includes two 40 Gbps USB4 that include DisplayPort connectivity from the processor, four 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2, four 5 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1, a two 5 Gbps USB 3.2 ports via a header, and a 20 Gbps USB-C front-panel header. Networking interfaces includes a 5 Gbps Ethernet driven by a Realtek RTL8251B, and a Qualcomm QCNCM865 WLAN controller that provides Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3.
The board's onboard audio solution uses a Realtek ALC1220 CODEC with audiophile-grade capacitors. This CODEC, in our opinion, is preferrable to something like the ALC4080, since it uses the HDA bus, compared to the USB 3.0 bus of the newer CODEC, and is more resilient to audio glitches caused by kernel tick mistiming with certain GPUs.
The company didn't reveal pricing.
51 Comments on GIGABYTE Intros X870E AORUS Master Motherboard
To directly compete with the Asus ROG STRIX X870-I GAMING WIFI?
Alas, only Asus did mini-ITX X-series boards for AM5. Asrock, like GB, only got B-series while MSI and Biostar none at all.
Already had posted about the board and with link to product page.
This supposed to be a High-end board, not talking about ITX or mATX board of course, that is a different story...
Can't take anyone's cope seriously about this.
This solution is terrible
Trading the second 8× slot for two hot-as-hell m.2 slots just under your GPU block
While the second and third PCIe slots are on the second chip and one of them just PCIe v3.0
Brilliant!!!! :roll:
Now I wonder if the price will also be the same but I bet it won't, they will market it to charge a lot more. Rebranding 101 and yet charging a lot more, thieves.
Consumer internet doesn’t normally exceed 2.5gb, most of these motherboards support that at a minimum. Some offer 5gb nics built in. The overwhelming majority of users will never require that sort of speed for home use, and if you’re a hyper specialized use case there are options. Seems like you’re making a big stink over absolutely nothing.
I wonder if they're still giving almost dead batteries pre-installed for your convenience, as well?
The X670E Aorus Master has only 2x CPU PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots and the other 2x are chipset pcie 4.0 M.2 slots. The third pcie slot is limited to only pcie 3.0 x2. It's got a 2.5GbE onboard nic. It also doesn't have a cmos clear button on the rear I/O.
Besides that, I don't see much difference.
my current oldest is 13 years old and doing just fine
Also, the X870 chip mandates 10GBe and USB4
This board only supports 5GBe...
Granted, bios flashback was made a requirement for AM5 yet some designs ignored that requirement as well. Requirements only work as well as they are enforced.
Enthusiasts have a bad habit of thinking the majority of hardware deployed/used is anything but niche. I often do it myself.
More likely to cut cost and charge the same lol.
I like the way this board looks better though.
Some would argue that X870E is a downgrade from X670E because of the mandated diversion of four CPU lanes towards USB4 which could have been used for a second CPU M.2.
Check out the B650I Aorus Ultra for comparison, and if that isn't expensive enough for you, check out the ASUS ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming Wi-Fi. It has the 2nd chipset on a daughter board just for the giggles of being expensive and using a TB4 controller. MSI X670E Carbon WiFi, Ace & Godlike, Asus X670E Crosshair Hero, both ProArts, or the Asrock X670E Taichi (Carrara) not good enough for you? If you want a Gigabyte board, you probably have to wait for the X870E Aorus Xtreme AI Top (or whatever it will be called) which seems to be the only non-Asus board that supports x8/x8 lane splitting for 4-slot wide GPUs so far.
Since SLI is dead and Crossfire seems to be even too antiquated for AMD to list it as a feature, most folks are happy with their single RTX 4090, it seems. The MSI X670E Godlike seems to come with an SLI-license, though. At least it has the trademark for the license on the back of the board, but MSI doesn't list it as a feature. Maybe, if you still have a matched pair of RTX 3090 TIs, that board could be interesting for you, otherwise multi-GPU is pretty much dead in the consumer space.
If you seriously need more PCIe lanes for Prosumer or professional workloads, and HBAs, video I/O cards, etc., you always have the option to go for entry level workstation DIY with TRX50 or Xeon-W 2000 series... It's more like an B650E Aorus Master with the lane splitting of the B650E Aorus Pro X USB4, but with a 2nd chipset added for the PCIe x4 slot. Personally, I get why one wants TB4/USB4 on the general purpose PCIe lanes for external GPUs, but sacrificing x4 gen5 lanes for something that only uses the bandwidth of a single one is really disappointing.
To be completely honest, after looking at the block diagram, I'm tempted to get another B650E Aorus Master or an X670 Aorus Xtreme on sale just in case, than buying this thing at any point in the future. Afaik, the Marvell Aquantia AQC113 is the only controller that is capable of running at different lane configurations from x1 to x4, but it still costs an arm and a leg. The cheapest add-in cards I've seen so far are still €80 around my place. Funnily enough, Gigabyte figured that out for their TRX50 boards, which are surprisingly economic when it comes to the PCIe lane allocation.
I was really looking forward to dumping my degraded Intel RPL trash for a nice, new, shiny X870E build but that ain't happening now with those compromises and overabundant lane sharing. I will wait the seven weeks (Oct 10) until Arrow Lake and if Intel gets it right with Arrow and Z890 then I will be forced to stick with Intel, unfortunately.
Sorry, AMD. You had your chance but you botched it in unfathomable style. Only if Intel fucks up Arrow Lake/Z890 equally, will I (re-)consider an AMD build but it will be a compromise-free X670E board (ROG STRIX X670E-A) and then a 7800X3D to be replaced by a 9800X3D later on...