Power Consumption and Temperatures

The Gigabyte X670 AORUS Elite AX has two single heatsinks connected via a heatpipe, essentially acting as one larger unit. This covers the entire 16+2+2 Phase VRM setup. These are also independent heatsinks for the PCH and top M.2 Gen 5 socket. The remaining three M.2 sockets share a single heatsink.




For the Gigabyte X670 AORUS Elite AX thermal testing, one probe is placed along each bank of power stages. A probe is left out to log the ambient temperature. For temperature measurement, a Reed SD-947 4 channel Data Logging Thermometer is used, paired with four Omega Engineering SA1 self adhesive thermal couple probes. All temperatures are presented as Delta-T, which is the recorded temperature minus the ambient temperature as a base. The end result accounts for variation in ambient temperature, including changes over the course of a test.

Tests are conducted over a 30 minute period. For testing, the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X is used in a stock configuration. Two tests are conducted per chart. One with a fan placed on the VRM heatsinks which simulates case airflow, and another without the fan. If the heatsink has a internal fan, it is not disabled for these tests.


Due to the thermal limitation of the AMD Ryzen 7950X CPU, showing the full capabilities of the VRM heatsink is impossible at this time without deliding the CPU. Future CPUs may exceed a 230 watt load, but this still gives a good idea of how the motherboard VRM heatsink handles a heavy load without any airflow. Using Cinebench R23 as a real-world thermal test, a fan is placed on top of the heatsink for the entire test duration to simulate high case airflow. Without the fan, as expected, VRM temps steadily increased until the end of the 30-minute test, topping out at 60 °C. Airflow near the VRM heatsinks of course will drastically lower the temperatures overall. Gigabyte so far has done a great job with all the AORUS series for these tests!


The second test was to see how the VRM heatsink may fare in games. Because games rarely put a 100% load on all the cores, temperatures are generally much lower due to the lower overall CPU wattage. After ten minutes into the test, we can see the temperatures plateau around 47 °C, (same as other motherboards). Add a fan and you might see the temperatures decrease overtime! Not really, though, this data error came from opening the door near the end of the testing. Regardless of if you have good case airflow or not, gamers should never be concerned about VRM temperatures with this Gigabyte X670 AORUS Elite AX motherboard.