GIGABYTE A520 AORUS ELITE

amazon GIGABYTE A520 AORUS ELITE reviews

AMD’s A520 chipset certainly doesn’t make for compelling PC configurations. You certainly shouldn’t buy it to fit in a gaming configuration with an RTX 3090 card. While we all want a super PC configuration and max settings for every game, the truth is that it’s always pocket money. only enough for temporary PCs. Or simply, you are an office worker, just turn on the machine and it’s fine. At this point, you are the one who needs to consider the Gigabyte A520 Aorus Elite motherboard that we will review.

The A520 is a cheap chipset. What does that mean? When you look at the specs of the chipset, it doesn’t have high-end features. There’s no PCIe 4.0, but don’t worry, Intel has one (until Rocket Lake next year).

You can’t overclock by increasing the multiplier, but you can still increase the clock (called BCLK), so it still “plays around” a little bit. There are fewer high-speed USB ports. In return, you can run any Matisse Ryzen CPU and use the RAM bus higher than 4000.

One of the main benefits is that the A520 Chipset will support Ryzen 5000 CPUs and Renoir APUs.

The main difference between the A520 and their more expensive B550 and X570 cousins ​​is the use of cost-effective circuitry and sub-controllers, along with the use of a lower-quality power distribution system. Many boards don’t have VRM heatsinks which means they shouldn’t be used with CPUs with core counts higher than 6. A520 boards also often lack WiFi 6, ALC1200 audio, and Gigabit networking.

Gigabyte A520 Aorus Elite is a high-end A520 board (of the low-end line), if you don’t know much about computers and just look at the price, you might mistake it for the mid-range. This Gigabyte motherboard even has 2 RGB headers and two other ARGB headers. Without wifi, it’s a real mid-level board.

The VRM array is certainly not enough to run the Ryzen 9 3950X for a long time, but its capabilities are also relatively good. Running the Ryzen 3 3300X is easy. We even tested it with a 65W Ryzen 7 3700X CPU and it worked fine without problems. The heatsinks work fine, everything stays cool under full load. The highest VRM temperature of 73°C is perfectly acceptable.

There are a single M.2 slot and four SATA ports, which should probably satisfy most users in this segment. What about RAM? Unlike the ridiculous limits on Intel B460 motherboards, Gigabyte A520 supports up to 128GB of RAM with a maximum bus of 4733. Practically no one will mount such a high RAM bus on the A520 board but if you like AMD is still fine.

The pre-installed main block and built-in connectivity are also very good, with one USB 3.2 Gen 2, three Gen 1, and four 2.0 ports. Although there is no Type C, 8 USB ports is not a bad number. Unfortunately, there is no Display Port, but 1 DVI-D port and 1 HDMI 2.1 port are relatively fine for most common users. In addition, the main has a Gigabit network port as you would expect.

Performance

Performance is up to our expectations. The basic BIOS code is very good and well supports the Ryzen 3 CPUs that have been on the market for more than a year. The performance difference compared to other motherboards is very small. Gigabyte only lost a little when under load but was ahead in the game tests. Overall, there is nothing to complain about the performance of the Aorus Elite.

Often when building a machine, hearing the word cheap means you’ve stayed away, even though with this mainboard it’s not necessary. A520 Aorus Elite is more like ‘B550 lite’ than the mainboard of an office computer. If you have a mid-range GPU, a 65W Ryzen CPU, an M.2 SSD, and one or two HDDs, you can simply buy this motherboard.

You can save up for better things like video cards, for example, that’s what makes a big difference to your gaming performance. We wouldn’t recommend fitting a Ryzen 7-sized CPU and an RTX 2070 card with a board like this, but if you’re on a tight budget, this Gigabyte A520 Aorus Elite is well worth considering. It makes Intel’s B460 motherboard look weak, in addition, this motherboard will certainly fit the next generation Ryzen CPU. Gigabyte A520 Aorus Elite is not a motherboard for everyone but it is not like the A320 boards.

where can you get a GIGABYTE A520 AORUS ELITE online

Gigabyte A520 AORUS Elite (AM4/AMD/ A520/ ATX/M.2/SATA 6Gb/s/USB 3.2 Gen 2/Realtek GbE LAN/Motherboard): Buy it now