GIGABYTE X870E AORUS Pro (AMD AM5)

If anything Gigabyte's main problem in getting you to steer your wallet towards the $360 Gigabyte X870E Aorus Pro is that it already has some excellent cheaper offerings, such as the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7. Part of the extra cost here is of course we're dealing with an X870E motherboard rather than X870, featuring dual X870 chipsets and the potential for more M.2 ports and PCIe slots available without lane sharing. Hopefully we'll see some other extras too, but primarily the main reason you might want to step up to X870E is for additional bandwidth. If you have zero PCIe expansion cards in addition to your graphics card, and only one M.2 SSD, then the board we're looking at here is very much overkill.

The X870E AORUS PRO ICE is another well-designed motherboard from Gigabyte. We had no problems with compatibility or performance during the tests. All components used on the motherboard worked as expected. The motherboard is also well-equipped, even though it isn’t the highest model (we can expect at least two higher models). Like in high motherboards from the 600 series, the X870E PRO ICE has a solid 16+2+2 power design and entirely passive cooling that handles all the heat without issues. Although, at first glance, it’s not so much different from the motherboards of the previous generation, the design and the long list of features, such as toolless M.2 installation or easy graphics card removal, improve the experience. The motherboard has everything gamers need: fast USB/USB-C ports, high-quality audio, four M.2 sockets in PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 standards, fast PCIe slots, 2.5Gbps LAN, and WiFi 7. The motherboard has multiple RGB headers and a backlight, which is ideal for RGB enthusiasts. Gigabyte motherboards are fully compatible with most RGB devices, such as fans, LED strips, water cooling components, RAM modules, etc. The X870E PRO ICE is also great for overclocking and supports a wide range of RAM frequencies up to at least 8600MT/s. We hope to see even better results when motherboards receive a more tuned BIOS. However, even the early version seems stable and problem-free, which does not happen often before the product premiere. The Gigabyte X870E AROUS PRO ICE costs exactly as much as the MSRP, $359.99. With a Newegg rebate card, it’s $20 less. The price is reasonable for what we get. As usual with Gigabyte, we don’t expect any problems with availability, and many stores have already listed the whole line of new Gigabyte motherboards with AMD X870 and X870E chipsets. The X870E AORUS PRO ICE offers all the best at a reasonable price, so it fully deserves our recommendation!