Gigabyte X570i Auros Pro WiFi ITX Preview

Introduction

If you’ve been following along with our X570 previews then our intro will be familiar to you, so skip on to the technical specifications below to discover what is unique to this particular model. Otherwise, read on to find out what the X570 AM4 is bringing to the party.

When AMD released the first generation of Ryzen processors and the attendant chipset we spoke a lot here at OC3D about how pleased we were to find AMD back with a product range that was a genuine return to form. Instead of attempting to keep updating the ageing AM3 platform they made wholesale changes with the introduction of the AM4 socket and a much more modern chipset with all the features that you could demand.

We clearly weren’t the only people impressed by this massive upgrade to the AMD range as the Ryzen CPUs and Zen architecture sold in droves. Such was the rampant popularity of it that we quickly saw the release of the updated Ryzen processors, the 2nd generation, along with the X470 motherboards that introduced yet more features that hadn’t quite been squeezed onto the X370 release schedule.

The hardware world never stands still for long though, and since the launch of the Ryzen 2nd Generation there have been a few new technologies given the green light to hit the market, and with the release of the 3rd Generation of Ryzen processors comes a new chipset, the X570, which is so up-to-date that it comes with a lot of elements yet to find their way onto Intel platforms.

As you would expect all the major manufacturers are gearing up with their X570 product launches, and whilst we can’t go into too much detail before the full launch in early July, we knew that we just had to bring you a glimpse at what you could expect.

Technical Specifications

Until now all the X570 motherboards we’ve been previewing here at OC3D have been the full-size offerings, and the main thing they have in common is an active chipset cooling setup that includes a fan. Naturally, when the ITX Gigabyte Aorus turned up we were curious as to how they had managed to solve the cooling problem.

Despite being on the compact ITX form factor there is still the inclusion of PCI Express 4.0 on the X570 I. If you were unaware the PCI Express 4.0 specification has doubled the bandwidth when compared to the PCI Express 3.0 we’re all used to now. So instead of topping out at 32 Gbps it now supports a massive 64 Gbps. Imagine products such as the Samsung 970 Pro M.2 drive, and making them twice as quick. Yes please. We can’t wait for the drives to hit the market to be honest, and we are even more keen to discover if this expanded bandwidth allowance will bring new eye candy to us as the latest generation of GPUs appears which take full advantage of the PCI Express 4.0 format.

Other areas that remain as impressive on this ITX board as the full sized models is the inclusion of the Intel Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax specification which, if you’ve got the requisite hardware, can push the boundaries of wireless connection speeds to even greater heights, perfect for our cable free world.

  

With such a small footprint there will always be some areas of compromise and the Gigabyte Aorus ITX has just the two fan headers. This probably isn’t the motherboard into which you should install one of AMD’s Ryzen 9 CPUs with their 12 or 16 cores. Certainly not if you wish to keep it cool. But then the target audience for a product such as this isn’t those users who prize performance above all other considerations.