Much has been said about the ever-increasing expense of PC gaming hardware, whatever the reason: mining, cobid lockdown, inflation, logistics, Mercury's transit of the sun, etc. But Intel's B760 motherboards are on the low end of crazy pricing, at least in general.

Many B760 motherboards are cost-effective, and some have every major feature and characteristic a gamer in 2023 could reasonably need: one GPU... one SSD... or two... one SSD... one SSD... one SSD... one SSD... one SSD... one SSD. If you need fast USB ports for your gadgets and gizmos, the excellent B760 board has you covered.

Today we review the Gigabyte B760 Aorus Elite AX. This is the top of Gigabyte's B760 series; only the B760 Aorus Master is above it. It is priced at $189, but promo discounts can bring it below this. Not bad for this price.

Relatively expensive at £239 in the UK, but $409 AUD in Australia, the Elite AX is also available in a DDR4 version, as well as a Micro-ATX version.

It doesn't have the space constraints of other boards I've reviewed, such as the MSI MAG B760M Mortar Max WiFi (open in new tab) and ASRock B760M PG Sonic WiFI (open in new tab).

Notably, the Aorus comes with three M.2 drive slots and three PCIe x16 slots, although the bottom two electrically operate at PCIe 3.0 x1. It is also worth noting that the primary slot does not support PCIe 5.0. This does not make any sense at this time, but it may in the future.

Appearance is always in the eye of the beholder. Within reason, looks don't matter much, but to be honest, I'm not a big fan of the design. There are too many random lines running all over the place, and it's a bit tasteless. Unless it's orange, or graffitied in purple (oh wait a minute (open in new tab)), there's nothing stopping me from buying this board if the rest of it is adequate.

Motherboards are moving away from excessive RGB and in many cases, like the Aorus Elite AX, omitting RGB altogether. As such, there are four RGB headers, two of which are addressable. Other notable headers include six fans/pumps, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C case connector, a Gen 1 connector, and a reset button, but no on/off button.

Does anyone remember the B460 and earlier boards stopping at DDR4-2666 memory or DDR4-2933 on the high-end chips? Yikes. Perhaps the B-series boards have not yet recovered from their "cheap" and thankfully outdated reputation. But forget about that, the B760 Aorus Elite supports up to DDR5-7600, and the F2 and later BIOS options support 24GB and 48GB memory modules for a total of 192GB of memory. This is more than enough for any gaming system.

We mentioned earlier that the board has three M.2 slots. These all support PCIe 4.0 x4 drives. The top slot has a sturdy heatsink with a well-designed retention mechanism. The other two slots are cooled by a single heat sink with a large surface area. This is because placing an M.2 heatsink under a hot graphics card may absorb more heat than it dissipates. Common storage drives should be no problem; there are also four SATA ports.

The B760 Aorus Elite AX is a premium B760 board, so it should have a VRM that will run up to an Intel Core i9 13900K (open in new tab) with no problems. it has a 60A stage 12+1+1 phase VRM with 8 pin and 4 pin power connectors to supply power. Not the most powerful VRM, but I was able to run my i9 13900K with no problems.

The heatsink is on the larger side, which is good to see more affordable boards with heatsinks that don't look out of place on a good Z-series board from a few years ago In a 10-minute Cinebench loop, the highest temperature I saw was 56°C. This is a bit higher than the MSI Z790 Mortar Max WiFi I reviewed recently, but still a good result.

Turning to the rear I/O, it is great to see a very good set of connectors. The only thing missing is USB 3.2 Gen2x2 (20Gbps) support: in addition to four USB 2.0 ports, there are two 10Gbps ports (one of them Type-C) and four 5Gbps ports.

Realtek 2.5G LAN and an Intel AX211 WiFi 6E controller handle networking, while a Realtek ALC897 codec with line-in, line-out, and S/PDIF provides audio support, although the ALC897 is nothing special, If you don't want the ultimate symphony orchestra experience, it will do just fine.

Finally, there are DP 1.2 and HDMI 2.0 ports. These can drive 4K monitors at 60Hz, and while it is unlikely that you will be gaming with integrated graphics, it seems odd that Gigabyte did not include HDMI 2.1 and DP 1.4 as many other B760 boards do.

System Performance

Gaming Performance

As for performance, the B760 Aorus Elite AX performed as expected. I always set the i9 13900K to Intel's default power limit to prevent the board from applying unreasonable "overclocking" power levels. Despite this, the Gigabyte scored over 37,000 on Cinebench, easily outscoring the other boards. Still, a pleasant surprise is better than a negative result.

In game results, the Aorus performed as expected, with a margin of error between the four boards tested.

The B760 Aorus Elite supports up to DDR5-7600. I was pleased to see my G.Skill Trident Z5 DDR5-7200 (open in new tab) perform without issue. To be honest, not many users will combine ultra high-end memory with a B760 board, but it is great to see high-end memory working without any problems on an Intel B-series board.

I like Gigabyte's Easy Mode BIOS page. It has a simple layout, basic boot sequence selection, XMP settings, and monitoring information; a good design for users who rarely access the BIOS.

The Aorus Elite AX is a good value for money at $189 / £239 / $409 AUD, and competition in this range is tough, but most of it comes from DDR4 and mATX boards. Competition in this price range is tough, but most of it comes from DDR4 and mATX boards; add a GPU, a 12th or 13th generation CPU of your choice, and one, two, or three SSDs, and you're good to go.

Many B760 boards lack expandability, especially the space-constrained mATX offerings; we'd like to see 20Gbps USB ports and PCIe 5.0 GPU support, and the secondary M.2 slot location isn't ideal, but at this price it's not a deal-breaker.

Ultimately, the B760 Aorus Elite AX is a good value option with many USB connections and networking capabilities, but not enough to truly stand out in a market crowded with similar choices. However, this is true of any of the B760's mid-range models of boards. If you are the type of user who is a fan of the Aorus brand and wants to focus on gaming, not the system that runs it, Gigabyte is a good choice. It is a value-oriented board that can happily run high-end CPUs and GPUs.

Compared to the more expensive Z790 board, the B760 Aorus Elite AX is affordable enough that you can reallocate a few hundred dollars to a better CPU, GPU, or larger SSD. These are the really important ones that add performance to the system.