Board Layout

The Gigabyte X870E Aorus Pro is very attractive with large dark heatsinks covering most of the PCB and a brushed finish on most too. Unlike many boards we've looked at recently, RGB fans will delight in the I/O shroud featuring an illuminated Aorus logo. However, the product photos are a little misleading as they suggest the chipset heatsink is also illuminated when it isn't. There's just a reflective sticker, with RGB lighting shining out the sides of the heatsink from underneath.


We're dealing with a very similar PCB to the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi 7 we looked at recently, but with some key changes that boost it's cooling credentials in a couple of different ways. Firstly, there's a larger heatsink to accommodate the dual X870 chipsets, which leads to a shift in the location of some components. There's also a few fan headers mid-board, which is a good thing as other Gigabyte boards we've seen recently confine them to the top and bottom of the PCB, which could make powering rear case fans or multiple fans in the roof a little tricky.


As well as power and reset buttons plus an LED POST code display and 3-pin ARGB header, there are three 4-pin fan headers at the top of the board to help power pumps, roof fans and CPU coolers independently. The CPU fan can output up to 2 A/24 W, with the same amount on the CPU_OPT header as well as system fans one through four and five through six. The shift of two fan headers from the bottom of the PCB to the mid-board below the 24-pin ATX connector is a welcome one in terms of flexibility, especially compared to boards we've seen with just two or three headers outside the bottom of the motherboard which can make things difficult and potentially require extension cables. As you'd probably expect on a board at this price, the Type-C front panel header is USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 and either side of this are 2-pin thermistor headers for thermal probes.


Four SATA ports seems to be the new norm, but thankfully Gigabyte hasn't seen fit to cut this to two, considering the target audience of an X870E board likely has a few hard disks they want to use. The onboard HDMI connector is a regular feature of Gigabyte boards and provides an easy way to hook up an internal case display screen. However, it's worth noting it's limited to 1,920 x 1,080 and 30 Hz, which might have been okay for third part screens a few years ago, but is a little behind the times today in terms of resolution. The bottom of the PCB houses the remaining three fan headers, various USB headers, a pair of 3-pin ARGB and a single 4-pin RGB header. The CMOS clear jumper is just below the chipset heatsink while the CMOS battery itself is underneath it.


Just two heatsinks cater for the four M.2 ports, but they're both quite large even if only the top slot has both top and bottom cooling for your SSD. The lower one features EZ-Latch Plus and EZ-Latch Click, which are Gigabyte's tool-free M.2 heatsink and SSD features. Here they differ slightly with thin metal flanges on the heatsink that slot into notches on the ports. This isn't as easy to work with as we've seen on other Gigabyte boards, where these components were exposed and easier to line up. There are two PCIe Gen 5 M.2 ports here, but they'll both steal bandwidth from your graphics card unlike the PCIe Gen 4 slot.


The top heatsink is one of the largest we've seen and cools both the top and bottom side of the SSD. It also features the same tool-free heatsink mechanism as the lower heatsink, which can be a little tricky to use and potentially puts the thermal pad at risk.


Gigabyte's PCIe slot release function is called PCIe EZ-Latch Plus, which differs from ASUS and MSI's mechanisms in that the push-button only releases your graphics card. Securing it works in the standard way by the slot automatically locking itself. We might complain that there are too many of these features, and they just increase the price, but here, you simply wouldn't be able to get at the PCIe slot latch to release your graphics card otherwise, due to the huge M.2 heatsink.


We don't have any complaints about the rear I/O panel, with a total of nine Type-A USB ports and seven of these are USB 3.0 or faster. These are in addition to the two Type-C USB4 ports that also double as DisplayPort outputs. You also get a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet port and Gigabyte's WI-FI EZ-Plug for the Wi-Fi 7 antenna. There's a USB BIOS Flashback button or Q-Flash Plus as Gigabyte names it, but sadly no CMOS clear button, which is left to the good old-fashioned jumper on the motherboard.