Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 7 Nvme

As generational leaps in motherboards go, the shift from Z270 to Z370 will non become down as a major one. Yes, the revised LGA 1151 socket on these boards offers ameliorate ability delivery to six-core CPUs in what used to be the domain of iv-cadre parts, but that's not strictly a chipset feature. Z370 itself is, as far every bit I can tell, a warming-over of the Z270 platform controller hub—they even share the same Intel product specification manual. Z370 motherboards are all near Coffee Lake support, for meliorate or for worse, and motherboard makers aren't being given the near revolutionary canvas to work with to mark the advent of a new platform generation.

What'due south a mobo manufacturer to practise to set itself apart when the primary changes are in a standard component that everybody has to implement? In the example of Gigabyte'due south Z370 Aorus Gaming 7, its highest-terminate Z370 board then far, the answer is a healthy dose of fresh styling cues and new construction techniques borrowed from the company's latest Intel X299 and AMD X399 motherboards. Gigabyte has been constantly refining its Aorus boards since the introduction of the brand with the Z270X-Gaming 5 and friends in January, and the Z370 Gaming 7 gets all of the latest improvements from that continued effort up until now.

The $250 Gaming 7 is the most extreme exponent of Gigabyte's Z370 styling trends. Instead of the plain white and black shrouding that we saw on the company's Z270 boards, the Z370 Gaming 7 has a sort of mecha- or cyberpunk-inspired mode that manifests as elaborate metal and metal-look accents all over the I/O shroud and heatsinks. Although I quite liked Gigabyte'due south simple and clean pattern language in the Z270 generation, this look is distinctive without evoking medieval torture devices or occult rituals. It should stand up out in any windowed case.

This lath isn't all about flash, though. To supply the necessary juice to Coffee Lake CPUs, Gigabyte taps a 10-phase (eight+2) power design incorporating power stages and PWM control circuitry from Intersil, an unusual selection in a high-end space that's been dominated past International Rectifier'due south PowIRStages of late. Gigabyte taps 10 of Intersil'south ISL99227B Smart Power Stage modules for conversion duty, and they're controlled by the company's ISL69138 controller chip.

These modules integrate high-side, low-side, and driver circuitry into i bundle, and they are quite plush: $five.50 each at Intersil's suggested prices. Even if Gigabyte is scoring those power stages in book, they would still seem to make up a pregnant part of the Gaming 7's bill of materials. Each unit is rated to deliver 60A, then the VRM assortment on this board seems more than ready to power any typical enthusiast'due south overclock.

This VRM array is paired with what Gigabyte calls "server-level chokes" from Cooper Bussmann, and the units and so employed are identical to those on the X99-Designare EX I reviewed some time back. This is, over again, an undoubtedly high-stop power-delivery subsystem more typical of Gigabyte's high-end X299 and X99 boards than those of its mainstream offerings. That's fitting, since the Core i7-8700K straddles the gap between Intel's mainstream and high-end desktop CPUs.

The high quality of the VRMs on this lath are let down a bit by the heatsinks that ring the socket. Although they may await beefy at first glance, the Gaming 7'southward VRM heatsinks are really spindly blocks of metal capped off with cosmetic fascias. My handy gram scale suggests that in that location'south more than metallic in these heatsinks to brainstorm with than in those of the Z270X-Gaming v's, but any air space in the VRM heatsink directly above the socket is largely occupied by wiring and circuitry for the underlying RGB LEDs.

The heatsink over the bulk of the VRMs to the left of the socket is perforated with only six tiny slots in what is otherwise a featureless, smoothen surface.

I didn't discover any instances of throttling or other weirdness from overheating VRMs during my stock and overclocked Core i7-8700K testing, but these heatsinks are one of the more extreme example of form over part that I've seen from modern motherboards so far. Gigabyte does snake a heat pipage through the bases of both heatsinks to effect better thermal transfer throughout the organization, but I'm not sure that organization can compensate for the large amount of surface area given over to cosmetics here. I'll examine VRM temperatures in more than depth when nosotros turn the screws on the Gaming 7.

Perchance because of these constraints, Gigabyte includes a tiny fan for active VRM cooling duties under the I/O shroud. This tiny fan joins like cooling approaches from Asus on its X399 boards, and I'thousand not actually a fan of these arrangements. Tiny fans like this accept the potential to spoil the noise characteristics of a system, and I experience similar more constructive heatsinks with greater surface area and less decorative bric-a-brac would be a more than effective choice to brainstorm with.

Like Z270 boards, the Gaming 7 offers four DIMM slots with back up for upwardly to 64GB of RAM. Coffee Lake ups the base DDR4 speed to 2666 MT/south for JEDEC RAM, simply the Gaming 7 should offer support for much college speeds through XMP and transmission tweaking. Gigabyte's QVL offers options at insane speeds up to 4166 MT/s. I got my G.Skill DDR4-3600 sticks running on the lath without a hitch simply by flipping on the XMP profile in the firmware.

You tin can besides see the Gaming vii'due south dedicated power, "OC Mode," reset, and Clear CMOS buttons peeking out at the bottom edge of the image above. Although these features may not be missed by folks who build PCs into cases (as nearly will), they're invaluable to me since I spend 95% of my time with my systems on examination benches. Overclockers without the time or inclination to install their boards on anything but a examination bench should appreciate these features, as well.

Expansion, I/O, and audio

Like many high-end Z270 boards, the Z370 Gaming 7 offers three PCIe x16 slots and three PCIe x1 slots, all meeting the PCIe 3.0 standard. Two of these are powered past the CPU'southward sixteen lanes of connectivity. The topmost x16 slot gets 16 lanes from the CPU with one graphics card installed. Deploy a second card in the middle x16 slot, and the Gaming 7 splits those lanes into a pair of x8 channels. The third x16 slot gets four PCIe lanes from the Z370 chipset, and each PCIe x1 slot gets a lane from the PCH, as well.

For PCIe storage devices, the Gaming 7 has a whopping 3 M.2 slots, the topmost of which sits above the commencement PCIe x16 slot for better thermal resilience against the primary graphics carte du jour's exhaust. The first slot is also protected by a handsome M.2 heatsink with a pre-practical thermal pad.

Since Z370 is simply an evolution of Z270, loading upward the lath with expansion cards and storage devices could result in some resource-sharing conflicts. The first two PCIe x1 slots get a single lane from the chipset at all times, simply the tertiary shares its bandwidth with SATA port 0. Plug an expansion card into that slot, and SATA port 0 goes night (or vice versa). Install a PCIe or SATA storage device in M2M_32G, the first M.2 slot, and SATA ports four and 5 turn off. M2A_32G, the heart M.2 slot, gets four PCIe lanes for K.2 devices at all times, merely installing a SATA device in it volition disable port 0, as well. Finally, M2P_32G (the bottom Thou.2 slot of the bunch) shares four lanes of PCIe with the bottom-most PCIe x16 slot. Install a device in i slot or the other, and its unused counterpart will go dark.

Those resource conflicts are a bit frustrating on a motherboard this expensive. The Gaming 7 simply has six SATA ports to begin with. Use an NVMe SSD in the commencement slot as your arrangement'southward boot device, and y'all immediately lose two of these ports to lane-sharing. It's a bit bemusing that Gigabyte didn't flip the resource allotment of lanes for M2M_32G and M2A_32G when it was laying out the board, considering that the eye slot doesn't ever conflict with SATA devices with an NVMe SSD installed. You tin can move the K.two heatsink to this second slot, at to the lowest degree, only and then you're subjecting your M.2 device to the jet blast of the PC's graphics card. This is a incomparably sub-optimal system for the storage-hungry.

On the audio front, Gigabyte employs its usual arrangement of Nichicon and Wima capacitors in the board's analog audio path. The codec that feeds this assortment is Realtek'south at present-ubiquitous S1220 codec, complemented past an ESS Sabre 9018Q2C DAC. This concatenation is claimed to be adept for an analog SNR of 121 dB, or on par with the claimed specs for many high-terminate onboard setups.

I had loftier expectations from the ESS Sabre DAC on this board, just the default voicing of the Gaming 7'southward analog audio chain is surprisingly low-mid and low-heavy, with distant, anemic highs. A little transmission EQ woke upwardly the potential of the system, however, and I was treated to an impressively wide soundstage, deep and expansive bass, and detailed, sparkly highs afterward. The Gaming 7 might be voiced for bass-heavy music by default, but I've never heard such an ambitious bias in any recent motherboard. Still, impressive sound is possible from this board with a tiny bit of tweaking, and it's definitely worthy of the toll tag. Of contempo motherboard audio I've heard, I'd say simply that of Gigabyte'due south own Z270X-Gaming 8 is improve.

The Z270X-Gaming vii offers plenty of possibilities for peripheral I/O. All of the dorsum console's USB ports offer USB iii.0 speeds at a minimum. The leftmost xanthous ports offer Gigabyte'south DAC-Upwardly voltage-control characteristic, which purports to provide more than juice to power-hungry devices on long cable runs if it's needed. Although it's unlikely they'll exist used on such a high-terminate board, Gigabyte offers an HDMI 1.4 jack and a DisplayPort i.2 connector for Java Lake'south integrated graphics processor, equally well. The lack of a separate converter chip for HDMI 2.0 means the HDMI port only supports 4096×2160 at a maximum, and only then at xxx Hz. Those looking for tolerable IGP output probably want to utilize the DisplayPort, which can handle 4096×2304 displays at threescore Hz.

The ii blue USB three.0 ports to the right of the gilt-plated display outs describe their connectivity from the Z370 PCH. The USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C connector and the scarlet Type-A port both depict connectivity from ASMedia's latest ASM3142 USB 3.one controller. Gigabyte backs this scrap with 2 lanes of PCIe iii.0 from the chipset for a potential 16 GT/s of bandwidth, a reserve that might come up in handy when transferring lots of bits over both ports at once. Higher up the Blazon-C port, we become a Killer Gigabit Ethernet jack powered by the company's E2500 controller. If you lot nonetheless have a thing against Killer for some reason, Gigabyte accommodates with an Intel controller behind the 2nd Gigabit Ethernet jack. The final USB three.0 port likewise comes from the Z370 PCH.

Somewhat disappointingly for such a high-terminate board, Gigabyte omits built-in wireless connectivity from the Gaming 7. The company'south $200 Z370 Aorus Gaming five includes Intel's Wireless-AC 3165 carte built into an M.two slot in the rear I/O panel, an ideal arrangement that doesn't crave called-for a PCIe slot on a separate adapter. Not everybody wants or needs a wireless card congenital into their motherboard, but I feel like the Gaming vii'southward features should be a strict superset of Gigabyte's lesser boards given its price.

In a bold nod to cases of the future, Gigabyte dedicates an entire two PCIe lanes to some other ASMedia ASM3142 USB three.1 Gen 2 controller for cases with front-console USB 3.i Gen 2 ports. Outside of a couple of monstrous and monstrously expensive cases, even so, USB 3.1 Gen 2 front-panel ports are a rare feature on today'south enclosures. I applaud Gigabyte's forward thinking for this arrangement, but I as well lament the fact that this connector (and its precious, precious chipset lanes) volition probable sit unused in nigh systems.

RGB LEDs

Any we might think of them, arrays of RGB LEDs have get central features of near every modern motherboard. We're long past the point where protesting the presence of these blinkenlights would exist useful. They are well and truly ubiquitous, and they're not going abroad. If you can't breadbasket them, the answer is simple: plough them off. As reviewers, our chief concern now is making sure motherboard makers are making RGB LEDs easy to configure and manage across a system. Given the ranges of color, animation, and synchronization available from modern RGB LEDs, the potential complexity of lighting direction is daunting, and it's a major challenge for motherboard makers to rein in that complexity in software.

For its Z370 motherboards, Gigabyte has washed some nips and tucks on the RGB Fusion software that manages the multi-zone lighting and strip headers scattered beyond the board. The fundamental RGB Fusion interface is now cleaner and more refined. Users get a choice betwixt iii modes: a Bones Fashion that applies a given color or animation to every lighting zone on the motherboard, an Advanced Mode that lets owners utilise dissimilar colors and animations to the board's 4 different lighting zones, and an Intelligent Mode that changes lighting in response to parameters similar CPU temperature, CPU fan speed, or CPU load, to name but 3 such options.

Basic Manner contains viii presets, but simply 7 seemed usable in my testing. Static allows the user to prepare one colour and brightness level for the entire lath. Pulse gently illuminates and darkens the board in ane color at one of 3 bachelor speeds. Music blinks out a one-colour light prove in sync with whatsoever sound that's playing through the Gaming 8's outputs. Color Bike takes the whole lath through the standard rainbow sweep that defines RGB LED lighting for many. Flash blinks every LED on and off at one of three speeds. Double Flash unsurprisingly doubles the blink rate of Flash. Random, well, randomly illuminates each of the board'south zones with dissimilar colors in an unpredictable swirl. The Moving ridge office is disabled on the Gaming vii, so I'm not sure how it might wait on this lath.

The individually-controllable zones on the Gaming vii are cleaved up equally follows. The lights atop the I/O shield, the lights embedded in the power-delivery circuitry, and the diodes in the upper VRM heatsink comprise one zone. The LEDs in between the DIMM slots are another such zone. A third region comprises the LED light bar and the chipset heatsink. The fourth zone controls the lighting in each PCIe x16 slot shroud. Any zone can be assigned the Pulse, Static, Flash, Double Flash, or Color Cycle effects, or users can go hog-wild with a custom animation sequence of their own.

The Custom interface brings upwardly an array of up to seven colour stops. Users can define the transition speed between stops (anywhere from five to 30 seconds) and the duration the sequence spends on each end (anywhere from one to 60 seconds). Each stop can accept a color assigned to information technology, likewise as a option of Pulse, Static, or Flash animation settings. In this version of RGB Fusion, the minimum elapsing of each stop is now but one 2nd, merely transitions remain stuck at a five-second minimum. The transition between stops isn't quite smooth on the Gaming 7, either. In one case the time set up for each finish's elapsing expires, the board's RGB LED controller harshly drops light levels to well-nigh-cypher so gradually steps them upward to the side by side stop's color and effulgence over the amount of time specified for that finish's transition. If you desire smooth rainbows of color, it's best to set each zone to the Colour Bicycle blitheness.

On top of those custom zones, the Gaming 7 boasts two RGBW strip headers that are compatible with both standard light strips and "digital LED strips," or strips with individually-controllable LEDs. The Gaming 7 can control standard RGB or RGBW strips using the same array of Custom settings I described for each lighting zone above. Individually-addressable strips can display those same custom settings, or builders can assign any of upwards to 12 distinct animation modes that Gigabyte bakes into RGB Fusion. I won't become into those modes here, but Gigabyte provides vivid demos of each one on this board's product page.

Dissimilar some competing motherboards I've used, Gigabyte too provides some rudimentary control over the Gaming 7'south RGB LEDs in firmware. The UEFI lets builders choose solid-color lighting for the whole board, equally well as the pulse, wink, and colour wheel animations. The RGB Fusion Windows utility remains the best place to tweak RGB LEDs, but for those who'd rather only set and forget some basic lighting across the board, the firmware stands ready.

Overall, RGB Fusion isn't quite as tweakable every bit Asus' Aura software nevertheless, merely I didn't have any trouble finding a lighting arrangement I enjoyed. Folks who aren't down with the blinkenlights can always disable them for good in the firmware, and that's that.

Firmware and Windows software

The move to an ostensibly new chipset didn't occasion a major overhaul of Gigabyte's firmware for Z370. The same Spartan interface that's graced the company's Z270 and refreshed X99 boards soldiers on in the Z370 Aorus Gaming vii, and it'south been carried over largely unchanged from those earlier iterations. If you lot'd like an in-depth analysis of this firmware's capabilities, bank check our our Z270X-Gaming five review.

Invoking the Gaming vii's firmware at start-upwardly volition drib users direct into the MIT screen, where settings for CPU frequency, memory frequency and timings, and voltage live. I've enjoyed how piece of cake information technology is to get in, practise what's needed, and become out of the firmware thanks to the front-and-heart presentation of MIT, even if Gigabyte hasn't taken my proffer to rename some of its voltage-control modes using industry-standard terms. Experienced users who know what they're after will find Gigabyte's current firmware easy to control, only first-time users may still find direction and documentation hard to come past.

The company's continued insistence on hiding common voltage-command modes like start Vcore behind opaque terms like "Normal" in the firmware, for example, is especially odd considering that the Easy Melody software now calls that style "Dynamic Offset," equally nosotros'd expect. Like shooting fish in a barrel Melody at least no longer requires one to enable "Normal" voltage-control style to admission that dynamic or starting time mode in Windows—it'southward fully cocky-independent and controllable from within the Bone. Now, if Gigabyte'south firmware engineers would but take a page from the Windows software team…

The biggest—and bravest—change that Gigabyte has made with its Z370 firmware is to kick the Enhanced Multi-Core Functioning setting to the curb. That feature now ships in Machine mode past default, and my observations of system behavior in Machine Mode have confirmed that the i7-8700K follows Intel's stock parameters. Given that performance differences among motherboards are and so minor these days as to barely warrant testing, I'grand glad the company has abandoned benchmarking gamesmanship in favor of user-friendliness and predictable behavior. This likely wasn't an easy conclusion to make or push through, and I'm glad the end result is the right ane.

I even so find that I demand to bump up the Gaming 7'south mouse sensitivity in firmware to get the fine control I desire for stuff like fan curves. A 1.5x setting is enough to get fine command from my Logitech G502 mouse, and so I'm curious why Gigabyte doesn't just make this the default across all its products. Otherwise, wearisome mouse movements are basically ignored or only sporadically registered, and that's a frustrating experience that simply shouldn't exist an issue in modern UEFIs. Otherwise, Gigabyte's firmware seems to have largely matured to the all-time it's going to be for the time being, and I've found it functional and simple plenty to utilise, even if I'm not head-over-heels for it.

Fan control

1 of our biggest nitpicks for motherboards in the past few years has been their ability to observe and control any common type of fan. Some boards practise fine with PWM fans and fall flat on their faces with voltage-controlled (or iii-pin) fans. Others cheap out and only include three-pin fan headers. Getting true plug-and-play fan control no affair what types of spinners one installs is a luxury that sets better motherboards apart.

For its part, Gigabyte has made universal fan compatibility a headlining feature of its Aorus motherboards. The Smart Fan five branding on the Gaming 7 ways that each of its six (or seven, if you count CPU_OPT) organization fan headers can automatically sense the type of fan that's plugged in and control them. Two of the board'due south headers can detect liquid-cooling pumps, as well. The just necessary user intervention is if a architect wants to configure fan curves of their own, and that requires diving into the Smart Fan five interface in the system's firmware.

Builders can gear up up custom fan command settings on Aorus boards through the firmware or the System Information Viewer utility in Windows. The firmware fan control interface gives builders access to practically every tweaking parameter bachelor from the Gaming 7. Each of the board'south fans has a 5-point speed curve to tweak, and Gigabyte offers three prebaked curves (normal, silent, and full speed) per fan header.

The firmware likewise lets owners choose the input one of several temperature sensors to control fan speed. Instead of relying on just one motherboard temperature sensor in an indeterminate location, the Gaming 7's headers tin respond to changes in CPU temperatures, chipset temperature, and VRM temperatures, or signals from the two included thermocouples, amid other inputs. Overall, Gigabyte's latest firmware fan control interface is splendid, and it almost negates the need for Windows software entirely.

System Information Viewer's Smart Fan 5 Avant-garde mode still doesn't allow users choose the temperature source that controls each fan, though. For that reason lone (and because of the fact that manually finding the lowest speed each fan tin run at isn't that big a bargain), I'd forgo SIV and just tweak fans in the Gaming 7's incredibly-capable firmware. I've long felt that Gigabyte'south Windows software needs a unified redesign similar to that of Asus', and the advent of Z370 does little to change that view. At the very least, Gigabyte needs to bring the custom temperature source options from its firmware into SIV.

Overclocking

Every CPU has different overclocking potential as a outcome of the vagaries of semiconductor production. The job of the motherboard, then, is to make it as piece of cake as possible to extract the maximum performance potential of each chip in a straightforward and understandable fashion without causing undue chance to the hardware at hand. Well-nigh mod motherboards also offer a suite of automated overclocking tools to allow fifty-fifty novices endeavor their hands at pushing frequencies to the moon, and the effectiveness of those features could tip newbies' favor to 1 lath over another.

I started my overclocking expedition on the Gaming 7 with the piece of cake road. Gigabyte offers builders two methods of automatic overclocking on this board: a set up of pre-broiled voltage and frequency profiles in the firmware, and an automatic Windows overclocking utility available through the Easy Melody software.

Commencement, I tried out the Z370 Aorus Gaming 7's "CPU Upgrade" congenital-in overclocking profiles. These prebaked recipes range from 4.8 GHz to 5 GHz for the Cadre i7-8700K. I tried both the 4.9 GHz and 5 GHz profiles with Prime95 Small FFTs. The five GHz profile blue-screened shortly after we kicked off our torture exam. The 4.9 GHz profile was more stable under Prime95, but one of my flake's cores eventually failed the test subsequently 10 minutes or and then. I didn't try the 4.8 GHz CPU Upgrade profile, since—spoilers—that speed matched the all-core AVX speeds I was able to achieve through manual overclocking.

Next upwards, I tried Gigabyte'south "AutoTuning" characteristic from within Easy Tune. After a reboot, the software set the all-core multiplier to 49 and proceeded to run a stress test, at which indicate it deemed the system stable with a 4.nine GHz overclock. I fired up Prime95 Pocket-size FFTs and was encouraged to come across Vcore values in a reasonable 1.284V to 1.296V range, only that wasn't enough juice to ensure stability under a enervating AVX workload at 4.9 GHz. Prime95 quickly showed errors, and that was the end of my foray into one-click overclocking with the Gaming 7.

With my automatic overclocking options exhausted, I turned to manual tuning. If yous've already read my Core i7-8700K review, y'all know the story, but I got my arrangement stable with a 5GHz all-core overclock and a -ii AVX first. Using the lath'south dynamic Vcore settings, I dialed in a -0.060 get-go, and all was well under Prime95 Minor FFTs. Temperatures nether our 280-mm Corsair H115i peaked in the low- to mid- fourscore° C range, and the board fed our chip a reasonable 1.260V to 1.276V on the Vcore. I didn't even have to impact load-line scale to go the chip stable this way.

Although getting my manual overclock dialed in was elementary enough, my testing did raise some concerns virtually the effectiveness of the board'south VRM cooling system. While I tested the four.nine GHz CPU Upgrade profile with Prime95 Small FFTs, I kept an eye on the temperature from the "VRM MOS" sensor on the Gaming vii out of curiosity. I'chiliad glad I did, considering VRM temperatures hit eyebrow-raising levels with that stress test running. Even with the Gaming 7'due south small VRM fan in action, I observed temperatures from the VRM MOS sensor apace climbing over 120° C, at which point I stopped the test. To be fair, I don't believe that Prime95 Small FFTs is an entirely representative workload, but the Gaming 7's VRM temperature sensor still crested 100° C with the "classroom" Cycles criterion running.

I brought this issue to Gigabyte's attention, and the company noted that the lath will begin throttling the CPU because of VRM overtemperature protections at 135° C. I did some research of my own, and I found that Intersil rates its ISL99227B smart ability stages for a 140° C "rising threshold" limit and 125° C "falling threshold" limit, equally well equally an operating range of -40° C to +125° C. Equally information technology shipped, the Gaming seven skated concerningly close to these limits, even if I didn't observe any throttling that could be tied to VRM temperatures. That'south a little troublesome given that more zealous overclockers could find the thermal headroom to push even higher clocks and voltages after delidding their CPUs.

By sheer luck, after I took off the VRM heatsink for pictures and gave information technology a thorough torquing-down on reinstallation, Blender load temperatures for the VRM MOS sensor fell to about 91° C under extended load with the 4.ix GHz CPU Upgrade profile, and Prime95 Small FFTs topped out at 124° C without the startling climb that I observed in initial testing. Those numbers are nonetheless high, merely they're probably non alarming in a typical enclosure with more fans around the socket.

Even with Gigabyte's specifications in mind, our seemingly typical enthusiast overclock brings the board uncomfortably close to those limits under Prime95 stress testing. That'south subsequently my heatsink removal and reinstallation, too, so it's probably worth giving shipping Gaming 7 boards a gentle scrap of actress torque on the chipset heatsink screws to be certain that the thermal pads betwixt the heatsinks and VRMs are making good contact. That oddity could take been a preproduction issue on my board, simply better safe than sad, I say.

Considering I can't leave well enough alone, I too directed a 120-mm fan at the socket during another round of similar testing, and I found that that movement easily holds VRM temperatures well under 100° C. Still, that's not a unproblematic or desirable step for the average enthusiast. Folks aiming to test their overclocks with Prime95 probably want to straight agile cooling at the CPU socket to ensure condom VRM temperatures, in any case. It's possible that our out-of-box lath would have strayed into thermal limits fifty-fifty with active cooling.

In general, an overclocked Java Lake test organisation seems ready to draw a fair flake more power and to generate more waste heat than Kaby Lake CPUs, so it would accept been nice to see higher-surface-surface area VRM heatsinks to go with the Gaming seven's loftier-octane power-delivery circuitry. Mobo makers seem to accept been able to concord Kaby Lake power-delivery subsystems in cheque with similar heatsinks, but overclocked Coffee Lake chips are going to draw more ability, period, and motherboards need to be set up. This isn't an unprecedented problem of late, either: mobo makers of all stripes take faced similar criticism of their cooling provisions for X299 VRMs from prominent members of the overclocking community.

Overall, my overclocking feel with the Z370 Gaming seven brutal in line with the feel I've come to expect from recent Gigabyte boards: friendly to manual tweakers, but not especially helpful to folks who but want a one-click warranty-voiding feel. In one case I had my manual overclock dialed in, however, the Gaming seven was rock-solid exterior of the seemingly high VRM temperatures I observed under our nigh intense stress testing. Just ensure that the Gaming 7 is getting plenty of airflow over the socket in a heavily-overclocked system, and life should exist skilful.

Conclusions

We're but getting started with our coverage of Z370 mobos, but given the minimal differences between Z270 and Z370 boards, I'thou comfy calling Gigabyte's Z370 Aorus Gaming seven a fine foundation for Coffee Lake CPUs at $250. Even if the major changes in Z370 are in the CPU socket and not in new platform features, that hasn't stopped Gigabyte'southward abiding cycle of refinement for its Aorus family of loftier-end motherboards. As the visitor's latest mobos have crossed my bench over the past few months, I detect that every one has gotten more and more than polished, and the Gaming vii is no unlike.

I do wish that Gigabyte (and other motherboard makers) would prioritize heatsink surface expanse over appearances, especially given the apparent thought and care that went into the Z370 Gaming 7's power-delivery subsystem. While the Gaming 7 does have a adequately massive heatsink on acme of its VRM circuitry, the corrective fascias on summit of these heatsinks seem to hamper airflow over the fin structures inside. The tiny fan under the board'due south I/O shroud seems similar a concession to this fact more than annihilation, and starting with higher-surface-surface area heatsinks to begin with is probably a better approach. I besides establish that torquing downwards the VRM heatsink screws on my own produced better cooling results than I saw out of the box, so overclockers may want to double-check that their own Gaming 7s' heatsinks are well and truly snug.

I only have one major complaint about the Z370 Gaming 7's layout across its heat-dissipation hardware. Gigabyte put an Thousand.2 slot above the board'southward principal PCIe slot—an platonic placement to avoid cooking M.2 devices—but using that slot with whatsoever Chiliad.2 SSD disables two SATA ports. That'southward a disappointing choice for storage-hungry builders, who will take to place M.ii devices underneath their graphics cards to proceed all six SATA ports debark. Go out the lane-sharing and SATA-port-disabling to the G.ii slot under the graphics card and give the primary M.2 slot four unfettered lanes from the chipset, I say.

Some other potential claiming for the Gaming 7 is that the Z370 Aorus Gaming 5 exists for $200. Information technology may not have the spendy Intersil VRM circuitry or three reinforced PCIe slots of the Gaming 7, only the Gaming five is functionally the aforementioned board. Information technology's got the aforementioned complement of M.2 slots, the same number of fan headers, and the same new styling touches equally the Gaming vii. The Gaming 5 loses some RGB LEDs in the deal, and it drops the Gaming 7's ESS Sabre DAC and dual NICs, but it keeps the Intel Gigabit Ethernet adapter that most enthusiasts will probably be happiest with anyway (justifiably or non). It likewise gains an integrated Intel Wireless-Air conditioning bill of fare built into the rear I/O panel. I don't envy choosing between these two mobos, but if y'all're not gunning for the most extreme overclocks around, the Gaming 5 is probably enough lath for nearly.

None of that is to say that the Z370 Aorus Gaming 7 isn't a completely acme-shelf motherboard in its own correct. The power-delivery subsystem on this board wouldn't expect out of identify on an X99 or X299 mobo, and it seems ready to juice up the hottest overclocks one could desire from a Coffee Lake CPU. Gigabyte'south firmware fan control is an auto-scale routine away from being the most comprehensive I've found. The visitor also includes extras like a padded I/O shield, a couple of remote temperature probes, and a front-panel connector block that are becoming unevenly distributed in boards from other manufacturers, if they're distributed at all.

Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 7

October 2017

In one of the harder tests any piece of hardware tin can go through in the TR labs, I had a burnished-smooth feel with the Gaming 7 over the course of a week of benching and tweaking with the Cadre i7-8700K. I especially applaud the company'south decision to cadet industry trends and leave the dubious "multi-core enhancement" off by default in its latest firmware. Even if Gigabyte'southward overclocking presets and auto-overclocking magic nonetheless demand some polish to be as useful as the best in the business concern, I appreciate that I felt fully in control of my arrangement with the Gaming 7 at all times.

If y'all desire the beefiest power-delivery circuitry, the best audio subsystem, and the blingiest RGB LED lighting in Gigabyte'southward Z370 lineup so far, the Z370 Aorus Gaming seven is a plumbing equipment companion to Intel'southward highest-performance mainstream CPU yet. With its reasonable toll, fancy feature list, and builder-friendly firmware defaults, Gigabyte has delivered an impressive high-end foundation for Coffee Lake CPUs with the Aorus Gaming 7, and I'1000 happy to call information technology TR Recommended.

Source: https://techreport.com/review/32669/gigabytes-z370-aorus-gaming-7-motherboard-reviewed/

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