
First Impressions & Aesthetics: This board is a stunner! The white/silver PCB and massive AORUS-branded heatsinks make it stand out in any build. The reinforced RAM/PCIe slots and tool-free M.2 heatsinks scream premium. That 8-digit debug LED? Lifesaver for troubleshooting.
Performance Beast: My Ryzen 9950X purrs with the 16+2+2 phase VRM – zero throttling even during 4K renders. EXPO worked flawlessly, hitting 6000MHz DDR5 with one click. Wi-Fi 7 delivers insane speeds, and USB4 is future-proof bliss.
M.2 Slot Roulette: Here's the catch – populating multiple PCIe 5.0 M.2 drives steals lanes from your GPU. My RTX 4090 dropped to x8 when using three NVMe drives. The shared bandwidth dance gets annoying for storage-heavy setups.
BIOS Headaches: Gigabyte's 'stylish' UEFI is cluttered. Simple tasks like enabling TPM require digging through submenus. Had Windows 11 install failures until I found the obscure CPU-based TPM toggle. Not beginner-friendly.
Annoying Quirks: The flimsy Wi-Fi antenna tips over constantly. Front-panel USB headers are awkwardly placed. Random USB disconnects (likely a chipset driver issue) trigger Windows' device detection sound like a bad techno remix.
Verdict: At $2299, it's overpriced for the lane-sharing limitations. But if you prioritize looks, effortless RAM OC, and robust power delivery for Ryzen 9 chips, it's a compelling pick – just don't go wild with M.2 drives.
