Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 5 offers a more cost-conscious alternative to its older brother, Z370 Aorus Gaming 7: Shave the second Gigabit Ethernet port from the I / O panel, the company also shaves $ 50 off the price tag while adding a low cost Wi-Fi adapter. Some onboard buttons are also missing, along with a single M.2 Gaming heat spreader, but Gaming 5 buyers still get three M.2 storage slots from their higher-priced siblings.
PROS
- Great overclocking
- Triple Slot M.2
- The fan header configuration is excellent
- Enhanced on-board illumination plus two D-LEDs and two RGBW headers
- Better pricing
CONS
- Some stock resources reduce SATA availability up to four ports
- Using the third M.2 slot drops the PCIe slot under the two lanes
DECISION
Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 5 solves the value problem of its Gaming 7 brother through a much lower price. The strong overall value of being a killer buy for customers who love excessive RGB lighting.
The company also keeps a complete onboard RGB package and associated light strip headers, but the value of such additions usually depends on the designer's aesthetic choices. We will treat this as a potential value bonus for RGB fanatics as we delve deeper into the Z370 Aorus Gaming 5 credential score.
The Z370 Aorus Gaming 5 layout looks very familiar, from the storage of three M.2 and three PCIe x16-long slots to the front header of a single Type-C USB panel, but a closer look at the specification reveals that the Type-C output is only of Gen 1 varieties (aka USB 3.0), while a closer look at the long PCIe slot reveals that only two of them are lit and surrounded by metal reinforcement. The latter change should be considered purely aesthetic by most users, as both motherboard models limit the bottom slot to four lanes of PCH, and descend to two lanes when the bottom M.2 slot is occupied.
Changes in the I / O panel are a bit clearer, starting with the absence of a second RJ-45 connector and the presence of two Wi-Fi antenna connectors. The USB ports have been rearranged to offer an additional Type A port, along two USB 3.0 "DAC-Up 2" USB ports with adjustable voltage, two regular USB 3.0 ports and a USB port 3.1 Gen2 Type A located on the same 2 Control PCIe 3.0 path as Type-C port. The last two ports are USB 2.0 and are suitable for low-speed peripherals such as keyboards and mice.
Like Gaming 7, the M.2 port over Gaming Z370 Aorus 5 steals two HSIO resources from two SATA ports, regardless of whether they are loaded with SATA or PCIe M.2 modules. The middle M.2 slot has the full set of PCIe paths, and steals the SATA port only if the SATA module is installed.
The bottom slot does not have SATA connectivity, but steals two lanes from the four-lane PCIe slot when it is charged. The top PCIe x1 slot steals the HSIO resources from the SATA port, so the worst case scenario has the M2 drive in the first slot, SATA M.2 in the second slot, and the x1 card above the PCIe slot will leave the builder with only two active SATA port ports.
Two LED-lighted PCIe slots reinforced with metal switch from x16 / x0 mode to x8 / x8 each time the card is mounted on the bottom of the two slots. That's equivalent to a course with a Z370 motherboard, given the CPU's interface capability to support sixteen lines directly, and PCIe's onboard CPU control capability to split it up to three cards. Almost no gaming motherboards have more than two slots that are given CPUs because virtually no gamers want to install cards on x4 slots, although some geeks may wish to CPU-based NVMe via M.2.
The lower edges of the Z370 Aorus Gaming 5 have HD-Audio front panel headers, power headers to show LED illumination using an empty board, one LED header addressed with a voltage selector jumper, one RGBW LED strip header, TPM module port, two USB 2.0 header headers, two-digit diagnostic code display, three (eight) four-pin fan headers, one (two) thermistor headers, CLR_BIOS jumper, add Thunderbolt -in the card header, and front headlight / front lamp headers extended with setting the standard AC-97 pin on the left, beep-code speakers and three-pin LED header power on the right, and the chassis intrusion head in the Middle. The chassis intrusion header uses the "N / C" (unconnected) pin that is usually found on AC-97 power style / LED headers as ground.
The installation package includes driver and documentation disc, RGBW extension cable with removable white head, high bandwidth SLI bridge, Wi-Fi magnetic base antenna, four STA cables, two Thermistor cables, I / O shield, and Gigabyte connector integration to lead panel front LED / flange buttons.
Specifications Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming :
- Socket : LGA 1151
- Chipset : Intel Z370
- Form Factor : ATX
- Voltage Regulator : 11 Phases
- Video Ports : DisplayPort 1.2, HDMI 1.4
- USB Ports : 10Gbps: (1) Type-C, (1) Type A, 5Gb/s: (4) Type A; (2) USB 2.0
- Network Jacks : (1) Gigabit Ethernet, (2) Wi-Fi Antenna
- Audio Jacks : (5) Analog, (1) Digital Out
- Legacy Ports/Jacks : (1) PS/2
- Other Ports/Jacks : ✗
- PCIe x16 : (3) v3.0 (x16/x0/x4*, x8/x8/x4*, x8/x8/x2*) (*Two lanes shared w/3rd M.2)
- PCIe x8 : ✗
- PCIe x4 : ✗
- PCIe x1 : (3) v3.0 (3rd slot excludes SATA port 1)
- CrossFire/SLI : 3x / 2x
- DIMM Slots : (8) (4) DDR4
- M.2 Slots : (2) PCIe 3.0 x4^ / SATA*, (1) PCIe 3.0 x4 (*Excludes ports 0, ^4-5)
- U.2 Ports : ✗
- SATA Ports : (6) 6Gb/s (SATA M.2-2 takes pt 0, M.2-1 pts 4-5)
- USB Headers : (1) 5Gb/s Type-C, (1) v3.0, (2) v2.0
- Fan Headers : (8) 4-Pin
- Legacy Interfaces : ✗
- Other Interfaces : FP-Audio,TPM, (2)RGBW-LED, (2) D-LED, (2)Thermistor Header
- Diagnostics Panel : Numeric
- Internal Button/Switch : ✗ / ✗
- SATA/RAID Controllers : Integrated (0/1/5/10)
- Ethernet Controllers : WGI219V PHY
- Wi-Fi/Bluetooth Controllers : Intel 3165 802.11ac (433mb/s) / BT 4.2 Combo
- USB Controllers : (2) ASM3142 PCIe 3.0
- HD Audio Codec : ALC1220
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