GIGABYTE Unveils RGB-Mania AORUS Gaming Motherboard For Intel’s X299 Platform

New CPU platforms means new motherboards, and the usual suspects are unveiling their latest creations here at Computex, Taipei. Today, it’s GIGABYTE’s turn with its brand new RGB powered X299 AORUS Gaming Motherboards. If boards had RGB dials, this one would be set to 11.

The X299 AORUS Gaming 9 would defiantly be a flagship RGB motherboard. This thing has so many LEDs packed on the board, it’s a literal disco in a box. The DIMM slots have RGB, the I/O panel is full RGB, the shroud is RGB, the south bridge is RGB, even the PCIe slots are RGB. There are headers for 5V and 12V RGB strips. To top it all off? Each zone can be independently controlled too. So much RGB… just… so much, and it can even be controlled by a smartphone. If that’s still not enough, the headers are 5-pin, supporting dedicated white or UV channels.

If RGB is not your thing, there are still a number of features to get you excited over some of these boards, namely the inclusion of not one, but three M.2 sockets. Part of the reason for this is the included support for Intel’s Optane Memory module that was introduced with the Kaby Lake launch and caries over to Skylake-X. One novelty is that the M.2 port situated between two of the PCIe ports is an extended card support. While the two other ports support M Key up to 2280 (with SATA and PCIe SSD support), the third port can support 22110 (110mm long) M.2 SSDs, but is PCIe only, no SATA support.

There are a total of 8 fan headers, one of which is high current, up to 3 amps, for water pumps. There is a rear panel USB Type-C port that’s USB 3.1 Gen 2, along with two power regulated USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports on the back. Dual Ethernet with Killer and Intel ports available. There is even a U.2 port for when those real Optane modules come out at some point.

The Gaming 9 board is definitely a board to drool over, even if you’re not into RGB, as there are numerous headers on the board for extra USB ports, SATA connectors and so on, plus the enhanced audio features and integrated wireless, again by Killer Networks. The Gaming 7 and Gaming 3 dial back the RGB (somewhat), while still keeping much of the connectivity.

The three boards will be released at the same time as many of the other new boards coming out, mid to late June this year. If you would like to see the RGB lighting in action, then pop on over to GIGABYTE’s website, and play around with the Fusion-RGB sliders.