The Box and Packaging
Inside the box, you get the usual installation guide, an information leaflet, AORUS badge, a Gigabyte Q connector, 2 x SATA cables, 3 x support pads for SDDs, 1 x SSD thermal pad and 1 x Ultra-high gain WiFi antenna with Gigabyte’s WiFi EZ-Plug and magnetic base.
The Gigabyte B850 AORUS ELITE WiFi7 Motherboard
The board uses a 6-Layer low loss, x2 Copper PCB and comes in a nice black matte finish. It features a Digital Twin 14+2+2 phases VRM design with premium capacitors, giving you good stability.
The whole motherboard is cooled by their VRM Thermal Armor Advanced featuring a heatpipe and cooling vents. It also comes with M.2 Thermal Guard L and M.2 Thermal Guard Ext. which helps to cool the M.2 SSDs. There’s not much RGB lighting except for some underneath the chipset heastsink.
A Closer Look
There are 1 x 8-pin and 1 x 4-pin PCIE power connectors on the top left-hand corner of the board. Make sure these are connected to the power supply.
Expansion slots include 1 x PCIE 5.0 x16 UD (UD Slot X steel slot) for your graphics card, and 2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots. The board features Gigabyte’s PCIe EZ-Latch Plus for easy installation and removal of GPUs. It also comes with 4 x DDR5 DIMM slots, supporting both XMP and EXPO memory modules with speeds of up DDR5-8200 OC.
There’s a total of 6 x 4-pin fan headers on the board (2 at the top and 4 at the bottom), which should be plenty for most users to install extra cooling fans.
For storage, there’s a total of 4 SATA ports and 1 x PCIE Gen5 M.2 slots as well as 2 x PCIE Gen4 M.2 slots, which is adequate for most users. These M.2 slots feature Gigabyte’s Quick Release & Screwless Design with EZ-Latch Plus and EZ-Latch Click for M.2 slots. It also comes with an impressive-looking M.2 Thermal Guard L and Thermal Guard Ext. with full cover heat shield.
The rear I/O panel includes 1 x DisplayPort, 1 x Q-Flash Plus button, 4 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports, 1 x USB Type-C port, with USB 3.2 Gen 2 support, 5 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 1 x 2.5GB LAN port, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports (red), 2 x antenna connectors (EZ-Plug), and 2 x audio jacks with 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector.
