AORUS X399 Gaming 7 Review
We all have already seen the performance AMD Ryzen CPUs are offering and how it has change the whole desktop PC market. The latest financial report from AMD shows that people are also showing interest toward AMD Ryzen CPU lineup. And now AMD is ready to capture the High-end-desktop (HEDT) market with their Threadripper processors which offers more cores, higher count of PCIe lanes and more performance than the Intel's latest HEDT processors, that too at a very competitive price.
We were very excited to get our hands on the new AMD Threadripper processors, and thanks to Gigabyte INDIA we got the monster here, the AMD Threadripper 1950X 16 Cores/32 Threads CPU along with Gigabyte's flagship motherboard for the platform, the Gigabyte X399 AORUS Gaming 7 motherboard featuring the biggest CPU socket every released for consumer segment motherboard the TR4 scoket with 4094-pins with eight DDR4 memory slots and more.
Now let's see what this AORUS board have for us.
Features
- Supports AMD Ryzenâ„¢ Threadripperâ„¢ Processors
- Quad Channel ECC/ Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 8 DIMMs, 3600MHz+(OC)
- Fast Front and Rear USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-Câ„¢ and Rear Type-A Interface
- 4-Way Graphics Support with Dual Armor and Ultra Durableâ„¢ Design
- Server-Class Digital Power Design & Gold Plated Solid Power Connectors
- ALC1220 120dB SNR HD Audio with Smart Headphone AMP and WIMA audio capacitor
- Sound BlasterX 720°, the Top-of-the-line Audio Engine Solution for 4K Gaming and Entertainment
- Killer E2500 GbE LAN Gaming Network
- Intel ® Dual Band 802.11ac + Bluetooth 4.2 – AC 8265 WiFi Module
- RGB FUSION with Multi-Zone LED Light Show design, support Digital LED & RGB LED strips
- Smart Fan 5 features Multiple Temperature Sensors and Hybrid Fan Headers
- Triple Ultra-Fast M.2 with PCIe Gen3 x4 interface and Thermal Guard
- USB DAC-UP 2 with Adjustable Voltage
- Precise Digital USB Fuse Design for Stronger Protection
- Ultra Durableâ„¢ 25KV ESD and 15KV Surge LAN Protection
- GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOSâ„¢ with Q-Flash Plus USB port
- APP Center Including EasyTuneâ„¢ and Cloud Stationâ„¢ Utilities
Specifications
Package
Motherboard comes in a mate gray/orange colour finishing box with a big AORUS logo with motherboard model no. in front At the rear of the box, we find that Gigabyte goes into great detail on the specifications of the motherboard
Inside the box
Looks
Board is a solid build in the mate black colour theme.
Layout
Detailed layout of board.
1. New AMD TR4 Socket with 4094 pins Supports New AMD Threadripper Processors
Being such a big socket with 4094 pins, the installation of the CPU is also different in this platform. Instead of lever type cpu installation with Intel CPUs, here we need a screwdriver (Which comes along the board and well as inside the CPU box) and have to screw or unscrew three screws on the socket according to the sequence printed on to the socket.
AMD Threadripper CPU comes with a preinstalled orange frame over it, so that your fingers don't touches the connection pads on the chip or the pins in the socket, second you can hold and easily slid-in the CPU into the CPU guide of the socket so that all the 4094 pins are properly aligned with the contact pads on the CPU.
Close the socket and tighten all three screws according to CLOSE sequence. And you are done with the CPU installation.
2. 8 x DDR4 memory slots, support up to 128GB. Quad channel memory architecture
Overclock DDR4 memory frequencies up to 3600MHz.
3. ATX Power connector (24-pin EATXPWR)
4. 2 x ATX CPU Power Connector (4-pin + 8 Pin ATX12V).
5. Back I/O ports : 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port, 1 x USB Type-Câ„¢ port, with USB 3.1 Gen 2 support, 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A port (red), 8 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, 1 x RJ-45 port, 2 x MMCX antenna connectors (2T2R), 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector, 5 x audio jacks (Center/Subwoofer Speaker Out, Rear Speaker Out, Line In, Line Out, Mic In)
6. Fan Connectors : 1 x CPU fan header, 1 x water cooling CPU fan header, 4 x system fan headers, 2 x system fan/water cooling pump header
7. Debug Code display.
8. 9.Front 2 X USB 3.0 Gen1 connectors and USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port.
10.8 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors.
11. Front Panel Connector
12. 2 x USB 2.0 Connectors
13. Power button, reset button and CMOS clear button
14. Trusted Platform Module (TPM) header (2x6 pin, for the GC-TPM2.0_S module only)
15. 2 x RGB (RGBW) LED strip extension cable headers
16. Front panel audio connector
17. Expansion Slots : 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x16 (PCIEX16_1, PCIEX16_2), 2 x PCI Express x16 slots, running at x8 (PCIEX8_1, PCIEX8_2), 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
18. 19. 2 x M.2 connectors (Socket 3, M key, type 2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe x4/x2 SSD support) (M2M_32G)(M2Q_32G) and 1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280 SATA and PCIe x4/x2 SSD support) (M2P_32G)
Removing Heat-sinks
Gigabyte used aluminum heatsink in this board with proper thermal pad installed. The chipset heatsink have backlit AORUS logo.
AORUS X399 Gaming 7 Motherboard with bigger VRM heatsink connected via heatpipe increases surface area for better heat dissipation with proper thermal pads, even extra thick thermal foam is used to cool down the filter chokes coils.
I/O cover is having a separate RGB LED PCB mounted..
Component Layout
Let's now see what all components GIGIABYTE have planned for this board.
1. 2. 8-phase digital power controlled via International Rectifier IR35201 PWM Controller IC and IR3556M (Integrated PowIRstage) is a synchronous buck gate driver co-packed with a control MOSFET and a synchronous MOSFET with integrated Schottky diode with output current capability of 60A DC each.
3. Two 2-Phase digital memory power supply section controlled via International Rectifier IR3570A PWM Controller IC and IR3553M MOSFET
4. A separate two phase SOC power sections controlled via International Rectifier IR35201 PWM Controller IC and IR3556M MOSFET.
5. USB3.1 Gen1 Hub chips.
6. Two MX 25L12873F chip for dual UEFI BIOS.
7. ASMedia ASM1143 a USB3.1 Gen2 Controller
8. ITE 8951E Chip providing Q-Flash Plus functions.
9. Killer E2500 GLan controllers
10. iTE 8295FN Microcontrollers used for RGB Fusion with Digital LEDs controlling .
11. AMD X399 Chipset
12. 13. ITE 8795E used for system monitoring /management parts and ITE 8686E is the SuperIO chip.
14. AORUS AMP-UP Audio is powered by a Realtek ALC 1220 120dB SNR HD Audio - The ALC1220 is a high-performance multi-channel High Definition Audio Codec with up to 120dB SNR for crystal clear audio along with premium quality Nichicon fine Gold and WIMA audiophile grade capacitors.
RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) suite is used for testing AORUS AMP-UP Audio against ASUS Xonar U7 External Sound card. You can see clearly the difference between Noise level, dynamic rang and Total harmonic distortion percentage produced by AORUS AMP-UP Audio
RMAA ASUS Xonar U7
RMAA AORUS AMP-UP Audio
Testing
| CPU | AMD Threadripper 1950X CPU |
| Board | AORUS X399 GAMING 7 |
| RAM | 4 X 4GB Corsair DDR4 |
| SSD | Samsung PM830 |
| Cooler | Thermaltake Water 3.0 AIO |
| GFX | AORUS RX570 |
| PSU | Thermaltake 850W RGB |
| Case | Thermaltake View28 |
| Display | Acer S220HQL |
| OS | Windows 10 |
BIOS
Bundled Software
Benchmarks
Overclocking
Power Consumption
Wattage reading as per displayed by APC Pro 1000VA (Model no. BR1000G-IN) UPS. Running Cinebench R15
Pros
- Very good Performance
- Two 8-pin + 4-pin CPU power
- Nice Audio
- Killer GLan and WIFI onboard
- M.2 slots with cooler
- RGB Fusion with RGBW and Digital RGB LED headers
Cons
Conclusion
We really enjoyed reviewing first AMD X399 platform product AMD Threadripper 1950X CPU with Gigabyte AORUS X399 Gaming 7 motherboard. We have tested many CPUs over different platforms, but the combination of AMD Threadripper 1950X and AORUS X399 motherboard resulted to be one of the fastest computer setup we have ever tested.
AORUS X399 Gaming 7 motherboard scaled very well with AMD Threadripper 1950X and in all tests we ran over it, resulted in top scores with superb performance. The motherboard has lot to offer with multiple PCIe slots and M.2 SSD interfaces, SATA interfaces, USB 3.1 port and more.
AMD have stepped in the HEDT market with a big bang. Offering more cores, quad-channel memory support with eight DIMM slots, 64 PCIe lanes even on the cheapest CPU for the platform and all this with a much lower price when compared with Intel Skyiake-X platform. Sure, if we dive deep into the technicalities than Intel's Skylake-X(Core i9-7900X) is still the absolute fastest CPU when it comes to pure instructions-per-clock performance and high-frame-rate gaming. But AMD Threadripper and X399 platform performance, particularly in content creation tasks and production workload is far better that Intel equivalent. So if you are planning for a higher end professional desktop build with AMD Threadripper CPU than the AORUS X399 Gaming 7 motherboard is best option and worthy of our PC TeK Reviews EXCELLENCE Award.
Manufacturers Info
Site Link
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