It goes without saying that at this point in the year, the desktop PC market is more than adequately flushed with mid-range motherboards. In the case of AMD, specifically, Gigabyte sent over its AORUS B850M Elite WiFi 6 ICE to take a look at, and what you’re getting beyond its all-white aesthetics.
What Am I Looking At?
The Aorus B850 ICE is an mATX motherboard. The “ICE” moniker denotes an all-white motif. Despite its micro-ATX nature, its Aorus stature means it gets the crème de la crème for cooling and thermal management.
That includes Thermal Armour, M.2 Thermal Guards for the SSDs, and, surprisingly, even Gigabyte’s Smart Fan 6 dual Fan curve mode technology.
What’s Good About It?
Aesthetically, this B850M ICE is a pretty looking motherboard, so if you’re planning on getting this motherboard, I doubt you’re going to want to hide it in a bric-a-brac casing or even hide it at the bottom of your desk.
In keeping with the spirit of tool-less installations, the M.2 slots on this B850M ICE is a fuss-free experience, with the heatsinks easily removed and the M.2 SSDs simply clip into place. As an extra-added bonus, Gigabyte has also seen fit to add an X3D Turbo mode to this motherboard, so if you happen to be pairing a Ryzen 9000X3D Series CPU, you could theoretically boost your performance in one-click via BIOS. Oh, and the Wi-Fi antenna is uses a literal plug and play design; you simply push the connectors firmly into the back and presto, you should have a strong connection to your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled device.
At RM1,279, it’s also one of the more appropriately priced mid-range motherboards from the brand, although it should be pointed out that there is a Wi-Fi 7 variant that costs the same.
What’s The Catch?
As this is an mATX board, you only get two M.2 SSD slots, with only one of them being PCIe Gen5. In other words, there’s little room to expand your ultra-fast storage capacity, save for maybe the older SATA SSDs and HDDs.
Beyond the issue of M.2 expansion, there isn’t another gripe I can find with the Aorus B850M ICE – it’s an mATX motherboard at the end of the day, so you really need to manage your expectations for this component. The good news, however, is that the back of this motherboard is flush with USB-A ports but on the downside, it’s only got one USB-C port in the back, and sadly, it’s only 3.2 Gen2, and not USB4.
For another matter, you do get a PCIe 5.0 interface but the second slot is only PCIe 3.0, and not 4.0. Don’t know why Gigabyte decided on this, considering that making it run on the latter interface would make the board more value for money.
Should I Buy It?
Yes, I think you should, especially if you’re not keen on spending more than RM2,000 for overpriced X870E boards. At this point, B850 boards are just as good and unless you’re the kind of person who absolutely insists on fitting their desktop PC with the most expensive components, I would recommend you take the money you save and spend on the other components like a better CPU, faster RAM, or even a more powerful GPU.
Photography by John Law.
