Gigabyte unveiled its latest X870E Aorus Xtreme motherboard at Computex, primed and ready to take advantage of AMD’s new Ryzen 9000 CPUs. While there are no B850 motherboards to take the value edge off just yet, it’s joined by new B650 and B650E Aorus Stealth Ice models to keep budget builders happy.
Looking like an absolute beaut, X870E Aorus Xtreme is the flagship motherboard, kitted out with a whole host of goodies. There are three M.2 SSD slots, two of which are Gen 5. Since the latest drives are exceptionally difficult to cool, Gigabyte chucks in the chonkiest integrated heatsink possible to keep your main solid-state drive chugging along without overheating. As big as it is, though, it looks like a champ with reflective surfaces and RGB lighting threaded throughout.
Since Zen 5 has a whole lot of bandwidth, two x16 slots are also PCIe 5.0. The primary port is reinforced with an Ultra Durable design that should keep it ticking with even the chonkiest graphics card pulling on it. Seriously, though, pair them with a GPU bracket; it just looks nicer.
Alongside making virtually everything it can Gen 5, the primary draw is USB4 as standard. Although value propositions are still some ways out, Gigabyte’s focus on B650E Aorus Pro X USB4 brings the feature to budget motherboards, presenting a cheaper upgrade path in the interim.
If you’re already sold on the whole cableless systems approach we saw at CES, Gigabyte B650E Aorus Stealth Ice is the one for you. Much like MSI’s Project Zero, it relocates all the connectors to the rear, keeping the front-facing part of your system as clean as a whistle. The white paint job goes a long way, too.
So far, we don’t know the price of any models revealed at Computex. X870E Aorus Xtreme isn’t likely to be cheap, sitting at the top end of the stack and B650E Aorus Stealth Ice will carry a premium for the bespoke back-loaded design.
