The GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 Review: Dual Audio Codecs
by Gavin Bonshor on November 14, 2017 12:30 PM ESTGIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 Conclusion
The GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 is primarily designed for gamers that want premium features, but don’t want to break the bank. Priced around $175 at Amazon, it sits at a very competitive pricing point as far as X370 boards go. With a 10-phase power design, SLI and CrossFireX multi-GPU support, this white and black themed RGB laden ATX motherboard offers a nice board for users who want to make the most of the dedicated front panel headphone codec, thanks to the inclusion of a second Realtek ALC1220 codec.
The AX370-Gaming 5 has eight SATA 6Gb/s ports, a single U.2 port and a single centrally located PCIe x4 M.2 slot which supports NVMe and SATA drives up to a maximum of 110mm in length. RAID arrays including RAID 0, 1, and 10 are all supported by the Gaming 5 with all of the eight SATA 6Gb/s ports having the ability to be used. It is worth mentioning that when using the U.2 port, it automatically disables the M.2 slot.
Performance is relative and no abnormalities were found when testing, although I would personally expect a more fluid looking BIOS - nonetheless it is still fully functional and will do the job. Although it seems like GIGABYTE has focused all of the research and design budget on looks and features, users planning on using Bristol Ridge APUs on this board can still make do with a single HDMI 1.4 port. There are plenty of USB ports available including six USB 3.1 Type A ports, as well as USB 3.1 10Gb/s Type-A and Type-C ports.
The power delivery is controlled by the International Rectifier IR35201 digital PWM controller with IR3553M 40A MOSFETs supporting it with a wave of custom GIGABYTE solid ferrite chokes. Overclocking on the GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 is pretty straightforward, although GIGABYTE hasn’t included an external clock generator meaning that the base clock is automatically set by the BIOS. This isn’t great for overclockers, but for the purpose of usability, it can be construed a good all-around as the only options for overclocking include CPU core speed and memory via a multiplier.
While this board does not have a built-in Wi-Fi adapter, there are two physical gigabyte networking ports, powered by a gaming-focused Killer E2500 NIC (with the new updated software for network prioritization) and the Intel I211-AT Gigabit controller. The board features a total of eight temperature sensors including six onboard probes and two probe headers. Despite the gaming focus, there is also a basic onboard overclockers toolkit which includes a power switch, reset switch, reset CMOS switch and OC button. The board lacks any built-in voltage check points for extreme overclockers, although those users probably wouldn’t consider an X370 motherboard without an external clock generator anyway.
The GIGABYTE Aorus AX370-Gaming 5 offers gamers enough features and software to satisfy the moniker gaming, but aside from multi-GPU support and a gaming network controller, but the board just feels like its lacking something for being the 2nd top X370 AM4 GIGABYTE offering. Nonetheless, for around $175 at Amazon, users will be hard pushed to find such a gaming-focused, RGB splashed, ATX option.
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Samus - Wednesday, November 15, 2017 - link
True, but the problem is most of the DAC's have a lower overall quality than many high end onboard DAC's. Especially wireless headphones. Until I found the SteelSeries H (Now the Siberia I guess...) I had pretty much given up finding wireless headphones with a decent DAC.PeachNCream - Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - link
Killer NIC... *sad panda*Flunk - Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - link
Only an issue if you want two Ethernet ports, there is also an Intel NIC on there.wolrah - Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - link
@Flunk that doesn't excuse it, that makes it worse. They clearly understand that Intel NICs are better, but they only half-assed it. Killer is gimmicky garbage. It needs to go away.The only non-Intel network card I want to see on a motherboard is one of the NBaseT products, and only because Intel doesn't yet make one.
DanNeely - Wednesday, November 15, 2017 - link
No, it means they clearly understand the market. Of the people who care about the nic brand, half have drank killer's koolaid and know it makes them game better, and half know that intel's the way to go because their drivers are much less garbage than the competition. This lets them supply both of the main halves of the care about nic brand market. The group of people who care about nic brand and need 2 of them is much smaller; losing them and/or sending them to a different model in the lineup isn't a major loss.PeachNCream - Thursday, November 16, 2017 - link
Does Qualcomm still own the Killer NIC brand? I thought that was their product operating under a subsidiary.nismotigerwvu - Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - link
There's a typo on your conclusions page. It should read "gigabit ethernet" not "gigabyte ethernet".Dr. Swag - Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - link
Could you guys add some more in depth vrm stuff into the mix? Like current capabilites, vrm temp measurements, etc. A lot of AM4 boards have sub par VRMs that don't have proper temp protections and stuff, so it would be really nice if you guys could add some stuff that looks into this sort of stuff.Horza - Tuesday, November 14, 2017 - link
The VRM information is incorrect as far as I know. It's running in 6+2 mode with, as you said, doublers on the SOC VRM so it's 6+(2x2) not 8+2.Cooe - Saturday, March 24, 2018 - link
This is correct. The flagship K7 also uses the exact same 6+(2x2) VRM setup (in addition to everything else aside from it's inclusion of a external BCLK generator & additional LED strip on the I/O shield).