Overclocking

Gigabyte's EFI and software is pretty much identical to what we saw at the X299 launch a few months ago, so you can see our full coverage here.

We've seen some fairly varied results in terms of the voltage needed to get to our CPU to 5GHz, and we suspect that things will improve for everyone as time goes by. However, the Z370 Aorus Gaming 7 excelled itself in needing just 1.25V to get there, although we did also set load-line calibration to the maximum setting. Even so, this is a considerably lower voltage than both the boards we've tested so far and is likely the reason its load overclocked power consumption is so low.

Performance Analysis

Once again we're faced with some very similar results at stock speed and when overclocked, although overall the Gigabyte board was often a tad slower than the competition. In percentage terms this isn't anything to worry about, though, especially as the storage results were spot on, and audio results, while lower than the rest of the field, are likely to make an iota of difference (at most) to the majority of us.

The power consumption figures are interesting, though, as they're significantly lower than other boards we've tested so far, and that's the same at stock speed and when overclocked. For example, despite needing just a little more voltage at 1.285V compared to 1.25V, the MSI Z370 Godlike Gaming tipped the scales at nearly 80W more under load and was still more power hungry at stock speed. 

Conclusion

While raw performance differs little as per usual, the low power consumption and excellent overclocking mean that we're pretty impressed with Gigabyte's effort here. We have no doubt that with some beefier cooling, we'd be able to go much further with this board than the 5GHz on our Core i7-8700K, and Gigabyte's EFI and software make achieving this easy, even if the former is a little dated.

We're particularly fond of the fan control software and EFI fan control section, which are very detailed indeed. We'd have liked to see more USB ports and possibly Wi-Fi at this price, but otherwise it's a superb motherboard with some fantastic-looking lighting that's the best Coffee Lake overclocking board we've seen so far too.