Introduction

Credit where credit is due - Gigabyte has continually been knocking it out of the park in terms of aesthetics, especially where white motherboards are concerned. Its new X3D motherboards dial this prowess up along with new features, but the X870E Aero X3D Wood adds even more to the equation.

Its new boards have automatically adjusting M.2 heatsinks, a doubling of BIOS size and tweaked bandwidth to avoid stealing PCIe lanes from your GPU whatever setup you have. Of course, the stand-out feature with the board we're looking at today is the addition of light wood veneer mixed in with stunning silvery gun metal heatsinks. It's rare that a motherboard makes you go wow when you get it out of the box and even rarer when that motherboard also costs less than $500.

If anything, the competition for the X870E Aero X3D Wood comes from within Gigabyte's own ranges with the existing X3D range. The excellent X870E Aorus Pro X3D Ice for example, costs around $50 less, but does have a slightly higher specification in a few areas. We'll be putting the new kid on the block through our usual tests and seeing if it stacks up compared to other similarly-priced X870E competition.

Specifications