Gigabyte Aorus RGB M.2 512GB Review

Gigabyte Aorus RGB M.2 512GB Review

Introduction

The Aorus range of products from Gigabyte has quickly established itself as a flagship of their brand and a challenger for any brands high end hardware.

We see an awful lot of hardware here at OC3D and some of it is instantly forgettable, whilst others imprint themselves upon us for good or ill. In the case of the Gigabyte Aorus range whenever we think of it the first thing that springs to mind is their excellent implementation of RGB lighting. A lot of technologies have appeared and made a claim to be the future, but the speed in which the market as a whole has adopted RGB LEDs still makes us shake our heads in disbelief. Some companies opt for subtle takes upon the formula but Gigabyte have gone all in on utilising those colour changing lights in every possible place, and to maximum effect. There is always going to be an area that the market hasn’t yet gone towards, and in keeping with their efforts to remain the front runners in RGB technology, Gigabyte have applied their Aorus lighting to that most humble of hardware, the M.2 NVMe storage drive.

No matter how good it looks, and you can see from the image at the top of this page that it looks great, performance is king when it comes to our storage. The difference a blazing fast drive can make to the responsiveness of your entire system cannot be overstated. You could have a Threadripper 2990WX but if you’re running off a mechanical drive it wont be able to stretch its wings, whilst even the most affordable system can be given a new lease of life by the implementation of a super fast drive.

Is the Gigabyte Aorus M.2 all sizzle and no steak? Let’s find out.

Technical Specifications

On paper the Aorus RGB M.2 – here in 512GB format – looks like it fits neatly into the upper echelons of M.2 drives. Anyone who has been around the industry for more than a few moments will understand that on paper most things look incredible, it is in the white heat of testing competition that the truth will out, so let’s take a quick look at it in the flesh before we subject it to our benchmarking suite.

Gigabyte Aorus RGB M.2 512GB Review Â