GIGABYTE X570 Aorus Xtreme Motherboard Review: Perfect Ryzen Pairing

The release of the X570 chipset alongside Ryzen 3000 series processor has brought many feature-rich AMD motherboards. The Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme is such a motherboard. This behemoth of a motherboard includes Intel’s Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax wireless interface, three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, a 16-phase power delivery, dual BIOS, and of course lots of RGB lighting.

All these features, however, don’t come cheap! The X570 Aorus Xtreme costs a whopping $699! The big question here is: Can any motherboard warrant a price this high?

Overview & Unboxing

As expected from a product at this price point, the packaging is outstanding!

The motherboard is placed in anti-static foam, which holds it in place quite firmly.

In the box, underneath the motherboard, you will find two additional boxes.

One housing the Aorus Fan commander and its accessories, and the other being a generic accessory box for the motherboard.

This package includes, 6 braided SATA6Gb/s cables, a Wi-Fi antenna, RGB LED extension cable, addressable RGB extension cable, dB detection cable, two thermal probes, case badge, front panel header breakout cable, G-connector, driver USB stick, and two Aorus Velcro cable straps.

The motherboard itself is stunning! It is almost completely covered in “armored heatsinks and heatpipes”. This is not only practical, since it helps dissipate heat away from the board, but it also looks great! Perhaps this is the reason this is the only X570 motherboard that does not have a chipset fan. This alone, is a great feature, since these fans tend to be quite loud.

The X570 Aorus Xtreme features plenty of connections for both fan and RGB headers. Gigabyte includes a total of 8 fan headers on the board itself. On the top right, the board also features two large onboard buttons for power and reset. This is especially useful if you are using this board on a test bench.

Continuing on the right side of the board, you will notice that the X570 Aorus Xtreme only features side mounted connectors, which is pretty rare, even among flagship boards. In our opinion, this is a great feature that allows for cleaner cable routing and management.

Moving down the motherboard, it offers 3 full-sized PCIe 4.0 lanes and 3 M.2 SSD mounts placed behind the amour heatsinks to aid in the cooling of the drives.

The I/O of the X570 Aorus Xteme is quite impressive as well. It includes:

1 x Q-Flash Plus button
1 x Clear CMOS button
2 x SMA antenna connectors (2T2R)
1 x USB Type-C™ port, with USB 3.2 Gen 2 support
2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2/Gen 1 Type-A ports (red)
3 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports (red)
2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports
4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
2 x RJ-45 ports
1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector
5 x audio jacks for 7.1-channel audio

Circuit Analysis

As its name suggests, this board goes to the Xtreme and is built first and foremost, for overclocking. This motherboard is the only X570 board available at the time of writing that uses a true 16-phase VRM. Most other premium boards claim a 16-phase power delivery by employing the use of doublers. However, the X570 Aorus Xtreme uses an Infineon XDPE132G5C digital PWM multiphase controller which allows for a true 16-phase power delivery. The X570 Xtreme uses Infineon’s TDA21472 power stages, which can handle 70A each.

The power delivery used in the X570 Xtreme truly is one of the best we have ever seen, especially in a mainstream chipset! Gigabyte has truly done an amazing job here.

When it comes to audio, the X570 Xtreme features the Realtek ALC1220. Gigabyte also includes a ESS SABER ES9118 DAC, which supports HiFi audio.

BIOS

Gigabyte’s BIOS has come a long way over the last couple generations. This iteration of their BIOS is very user-friendly. It has a black background with orange accents and white lettering, which is consistent with the AORUS brand.

The Easy mode of the BIOS offers great functionality and is quite informational. On the left, it displays the motherboard type, BIOS version, CPU, RAM, and storage information. Towards the middle, it displays CPU frequency, temperature and voltage as well as memory frequency and voltage, along with PCH and VRM temperatures.

Advanced mode includes a multitude of other options. It includes headings labeled: Favorites, Tweaked, Settings, System Info, Boot and Save and Exit.

Overall, we were impressed with the improved Gigabyte BIOS. All menus and sub-menus are located where expected. It is easy to navigate and yet very efficient!

This motherboard also includes the usual Gigabyte software such as APP Center, RGB Fusion, Cloud Station, Auto Green, Fast Boot, Game Boost, Smart Backup, Smart Keyboard, USB Turbo Charger and more.

Performance & Overclocking

In order to test overclocking performance, we used a Ryzen 9 3900x CPU coupled with G. Skill TridentZ Neo 16GB 3600MhZ RAM. Also, to push the CPU to its limits we used an open loop featuring a 360mm radiator.

Overclocking the 3900x with this motherboard was pretty simple, as you would expect! We were able to overclock all cores to 4.3Ghz while using 1.410v on the core. Even without airflow directed over the VRMs, they remained incredibly cool at just 43°C. XMP also worked flawlessly with our TridentZ Neo kit.

Conclusion

The Gigabyte X570 Aorus Xtreme is a very expensive product at $700. However, it offers pretty much anything enthusiasts could ask for. The X570 Aorus Xtreme offers a best in class VRM and is the only X570 motherboard that does not require active chipset cooling.