Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master
$629 | WWW.AORUS.COM Impressive attention to detail.
“Gigabyte has completely overhauled the VRM compared to the X470 Master. ”
Gigabyte’s gaming products are now well established under its premium Aorus gaming brand. The X570 Aorus Master we’re reviewing here is a reasonably priced fully featured offering at $629 (strictly relatively!). It has many of the Aorus traits we’ve come to expect are here including a lovely RGB look and a well-engineered audio implementation.
One of the things we really like about the Aorus Master is the use of proper finned VRM heat sinks. This greatly increases the cooling surface area, and Gigabyte has managed to combine functionality with aesthetics. Long may this continue!
Gigabyte have included three M.2 slots, each with their own isolated cooling unlike many other boards which have a fiddly
installation procedure. The heat sinks can be removed making it suitable for use with the increasingly prevalent heat sink equipped M.2 drives, particularly PCIe 4.0 ones including Aorus own PCIe 4.0 drive with its chunky copper design.
Gigabyte has completely overhauled the VRM compared to the X470 Master. A genuine 14 phase VRM with dual 8 pin auxiliary power connectors is capable of delivering 700 amps according to Gigabyte. Need 1,000W for your CPU? No worries!
We’re usually impressed with the attention to detail that Gigabyte pays towards its audio solutions and the Aorus Master continues this trend. The inclusion of an ESS Sabre DAC and things like WIMA capacitors mean that analogue audio performance is as good as any motherboard.
The I/O area has a good helping of ports with four USB 3.2 Gen 2, 2x Gen 1 and four USB 2.0. Additionally there’s the Intel Gigabit and Realtek 2.5G LAN ports, which along with the 802.11ax Wi-Fi is standard on all but the cheaper Asrock board. 2.5G and higher is a very welcome addition to X570 boards.
The Aorus Master performed reasonably well in our benchmark test suite. It was perhaps marginally slower in single threaded applications but nothing to really take issue with. We’d expect boards that are part of a mature platform ecosystem to perform within one or two percent of each other at most, but with BIOS updates coming every other day on a new platform, you get the feeling there’s some performance still to come.
The Aorus’ UEFI BIOS is simple and easy to use, with all the important features well laid out. It’s probably not as comprehensive as the likes of the Asus BIOS, but it’s easier to navigate and a touch more user friendly.
The X570 Aorus Master can never be called cheap at $629 and on paper it’s specification doesn’t seem all that different from the likes of the Asrock Taichi or MSI Ace, but it’s the little things and specific implementations that make a difference. The cooling is top notch along with the audio, as well as thoughtful M.2 cooling and good helping of I/O connectivity. Whether these things are worth the extra dollars over the cheaper MSI and much cheaper Asrock is up to you. We think the Gigabyte is relatively good value for what it offers.