On The Wings of an Eagle: GIGABYTE's X570 I Aorus Pro WIFI Motherboard Tested

Board Features

The GIGABYTE X570 I Aorus Pro WIFI is the only mini-ITX offering on the X570 platform from GIGABYTE, and despite being the cheapest mid-range mITX X570 board on the market, it caters towards the mid-range. With its small form factor frame, it has one full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot and includes two PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, as well as four SATA ports which have support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. A restriction to using a smaller form factor is apparent in the memory slots, with the GIGABYTE X570 I Aorus Pro WIFI including just two slots. These have support for up to DDR4-4400 and up to 64 GB of system memory. Although the X570 I Aorus Pro WIFI includes support for Ryzen's 3000 series processors including the 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X, the board has just two 4-pin fan headers with one designated to CPU coolers and a single fan header for a chassis fan. 

GIGABYTE has included a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec to power the onboard audio, while the rear panel offers just three 3.5 mm jacks, with no S/PDIF optical output. This is primarily down to the smaller size of the mini-ITX form factor. The GIGABYTE X570 I Aorus Pro WIFI does include an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface which includes BT 5.0 connectivity, while the board also features a single Intel Gigabit Ethernet controller for wired networks. On the rear panel is just two USB 3.1 G2 ports with a single Type-A and Type-C, with a total of four USB 3.1 G1 Type-A ports to assist these. A trio of video outputs which consist of two HDMI 2.0 and a single DisplayPort 1.2 output can drive up to three displays at the same time and makes this board a primary contender for users looking to create a low-cost small form factor Ryzen APU system.

Test Bed

As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

While we have been able to measure audio performance from previous Z370 motherboards, the task has been made even harder with the roll-out of the Z390 chipset and none of the boards tested so far has played ball. It seems all USB support for Windows 7 is now extinct so until we can find a reliable way of measuring audio performance on Windows 10 or until a workaround can be found, audio testing will have to be done at a later date.

Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.

Hardware Providers for CPU and Motherboard Reviews
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