Today we have a quick overview of the Gigabyte X570 I AORUS PRO WiFi. This is a mITX AMD Ryzen socket AM4 platform and is a higher-end offering. This is also part of our series of platforms we are using to test AMD PSB or Platform Secure Boot. As we started to find AMD PSB being enabled by some vendors, thereby vendor-locking AMD Ryzen processors, we decided to get a set of test platforms together. That is why we have the X570 I AORUS PRO overview today. This is one of the platforms we are using to check for AMD PSB. Plus, it is a cool little platform.
Gigabyte X570 I AORUS PRO WiFi Overview
The board itself is a fairly standard mITX platform for the AM4 generation. mITX is just at the point where all of the platform features can mostly be utilized while also remaining compact.
The system itself supports AMD Socket AM4 so this is a Ryzen motherboard.
We think many will use this motherboard with a PCIe GPU, but we are focusing on using integrated graphics. As such, we have the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G as our standard CPU in this platform.
One of the challenges is cooling in these mITX systems. The stock AMD cooler fit but things are certainly tight. One can also see that there is a fairly tight 8-pin power connector next to the CPU fan 4-pin PWM header.
Next to the CPU, we get two DDR4 DIMM slots. There is only a little bit of room between these and the ATX 24-pin power connector that looks monstrous in size on such a small motherboard. We also get our front panel headers, four SATA ports, and the USB 3.0 front panel header along this edge. Everything is packed.
On the bottom of the motherboard, we get a heatsink with a fan as well as a PCIe x16 slot. With the AMD Ryzen G and GE processors, this slot operates at PCIe Gen3 speeds, but it can run at Gen4 speeds if a non-G/GE CPU is used.
Removing the heatsink and fan takes two screws, underneath the remaining heatsink is the AMD X570 chipset. This uses quite a bit of power hence the larger cooling solution.
In the middle, we have space for a M.2 slot. We can see a Crucial P5 Plus 1TB NVMe SSD installed in there.
For the second M.2 slot, one can find that on the bottom side of the motherboard. Something that we really like here is that Gigabyte has a nice shield on the bottom of the motherboard. That makes this feel like a much more premium platform.
In terms of rear I/O we get a lot here it is an interesting story. There are four USB 3.2 Gen1 (5Gbps) Type-A ports. Continuing on the USB side we also get a USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A and Type-C 10Gbps pot on the rear of this board. There are only three audio jacks, but that is due to space constraints. We get three video outputs though, one DisplayPort and two HDMI ports.
On the rear of the unit, we also get WiFi headers, and an included WiFi antenna.
WiFi is provided by an Intel AX200 module.
Networking on the wired side is a bit of a letdown since there is only a single 1GbE port. Some of the other solutions we are looking at have 2.5GbE NICs.
Still, there is a lot packed in here. So much so that we only have two 4-pin fan headers. It is amazing to see just how much is packed into this platform.
Final Words
One quick note on this is that the first motherboard we had an over 1-year old BIOS installed that did not play nicely with the Ryzen 7 5700G. Updating the BIOS caused a hang, and the first board could not be recovered even with the Q-FLASH Plus. That is how we realized that this board was so packed that it did not have Gigabyte’s dual BIOS feature.
Still, this is a nice little platform. We really wish it had 2.5GbE. Putting an X570 on a small motherboard like this is challenging, so it is awesome to see Gigabyte do it. Once the BIOS challenge was sorted, this became a great platform to do verification on for AMD PSB processors. Since we had it, we figured why not show it off.
I own 2 of these boards paired with the 5600X for some time now.
The BIOS flashing via GUI/ Windows app is somewhat quirky and did cause boot issues for both of my boards.
I used Q-flash Plus BIOS recovery procedure to flash/ update the BIOS and that worked but I had to reseat the memory to get it to work (seems like moving the machine to reach the Q-flash slots somehow loosen the sticks).
Great Review. I bought a “X570SI AORUS PRO AX (rev. 1.1)” in the last 2 weeks and it’s essentially the same board except they updated the chipset to a lower voltage x570 chipset, increased the heatsink so the board is fan less, added 2.5 GbE (but only a single one) and Wifi6e (adds 6ghz wifi channel). Also there is settings in the bios for NVDIMM and ECC, however not sure how many people will be using this on these boards. If buying new, looking for this updated revision of the board is probably a better bet (but also has the same limitation of no dual bios).
Only 4 SATA ports, only 2 M.2 Slots, active chipset cooling, only 1 Ethernet port, only 1G ethernet, useless backside cover.. but something special: expensive.
the asrock rack unit has BMC and dual 10g intel ethernet.
@Marc Gutt
4 SATA & 2 M.2 is standard on an mITX board. Sure it would be nice if the Ethernet was 2.5G but that isn’t anything to make or break things for 99.9% of home users. Same as only having a single RJ45 port.
FYI I quickly looked at the Z690 mITX boards and they had 2-4 SATA ports & 2 M.2. LAN was 2.5G on all of them and a single one had a 2nd 1G port. Don’t forget that the X570 in this review came out almost 3 years ago (July 2019).
I get that standards are the way they are and that that ‘because that is how we did and do and will do it, and case makers suck’, but why are all the connecters STILL only on one side of the the MB? It seems like a lot of the cramp could be alleviated by using all the wide open space on the other side. It don’t have to be a pizza, does it?
@Mark I bought the fanless X570SI a couple of weeks ago too and it’s a great ITX motherboard that few people know about. In addition to the upgraded LAN and WiFi that you mentioned, it also has the internal Type-C header and 3 fan headers (1 for the CPU, 2 small headers that you use short PWM adapters to use. I’m really impressed with this late X570 ITX model.