Gigabyte x570 AORUS ULTRA

[Nyx_the_Fallen]

Hey all,

 

I bought the Gigabyte x570 AORUS ULTRA this past August, and I figured I would share my experience with all of you, just in case you're looking at motherboards that are guaranteed to be compatible with the next generation of AMD CPUs.

 

First, the good:

1. The board looks and feels high-quality. It's thicc, black, and most pieces you'd end up doing anything with are metal. The VRMs and their heatsinks are BEEFY, and I never even approached having power delivery issues on the CPU. 
2. RAM support is pretty good. The QVL list has grown a ton since launch, and I've had luck overclocking non-QVL RAM. I have heard whispers online about some QVL ram not working on XMP, but I haven't run into this issue. 
3. Onboard WiFi and Bluetooth is flawless... almost. I was going to run an Ethernet cord to my new office for gaming, but honestly, the WiFi is so good that I didn't bother. However, I kind of hate their antenna. There's really no good way to hide it. 
4. No issues with audio. 
5. PCIe slots are awesome--they're metal-reinforced, and had no problems supporting my 3-fan giant of a GPU.
6. This is a weird thing to like, but the built in IO shield is pretty awesome. As is the IO itself. 

 

All of that makes this board look pretty compelling. On to the bad...

 

1.  Mine broke. I'm not sure what happened, but it just started randomly bluescreening constantly. I can't speak to their overall durability, though, because I am a sample size of one. 
2. This is the worst RMA experience I have ever had, hands-down. Originally, I thought my issues were my graphics card. I sent it in to Sapphire. They called me the day they received it, said they couldn't find any issues, and shipped me a refurb the next day. Total RMA time was under a week. Gigabyte? Today is the mensiversary of starting the process. The card arrived at their repair center on the 28th of last month, early in the day. They didn't acknowledge receipt until late the next day. And since then, in the intervening 21 days? No contact, whatsoever. It's like talking to a brick wall.

In summary, if you get a working model and it stays working, this is a great product. But... watch out. If anything goes wrong, you're done for. Perhaps Gigabyte will redeem themselves somehow, but at this point, I will never purchase another of their products unless I can get MicroCenter's protection plan for it.