Aorus Z370 Ultra Gaming Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

It’s pretty common now that gaming motherboards have to look as good as they perform. Aesthetics are a big deal these days, and fortunately, the Aorus Ultra Gaming really does look the part. The black and grey PCB is a nice contrast for the metal armour on the PCIe and DIMMs. Of course, it’s those huge black heat sinks, the rear I/O and other hardware that give it presence, with some subtle red highlights for good measure.

The new socket is there in all its glory and is surrounded by durable black capacitors and chokes. Those huge heat sinks are pretty heavy duty too and should help ensure the motherboard hardware stays cool, especially while overclocking the CPU.

Even if you’re not overclocking, they’re aesthetically pleasing too, which is no bad thing.

The CPU takes its power from a single 8-pin header. I expect we’ll see higher spec boards in the coming months with two, but for now, this is more than enough for the new 6-core CPUs to run at 5 GHz and maybe beyond.

M.2 and Optane

There are two M.2 drive mounts on this motherboard, although you can also use an Optane drive from Intel too for an extra performance boost.

There are three full-size PCIe slots, two of which come with durable armour to help support the weight of modern graphics cards. They’re spaced nicely too, so you can SLI/Crossfire some of the thicker cards on the market with relative ease.

RGB DIMMS

there’s plenty of RGB lighting tucked away on this motherboard, but the ones that stand out the most are strip lights on the DIMM slots, as well as a bit of trim on the right edge.

There are six SATA 3 ports, pretty standard stuff really, and they’re configured with four on the edge, and two in the bottom right corner.

Unfortunately, no on-board controls or BIOS reset buttons, but all the usual headers are here so you can still get the job done.

The built-in Amp Up Audio hardware is on a PCB trace, keeping it separate from the primary hardware, and that should cut down on any unwanted interference.

Finally, the rear I/O looks well equipped too. There’s a good mixture of USB ports, GbE LAN, and audio connectors. There’s an HDMI port, and even a PS2 and DVI connector for good measure.