ASUS AURA 970 - Best AMD Gaming Motherboard for the price ?

13:47 Hardware 0 Comments

I recently wrote an article on ASUS at CES 2016 and praised them for releasing a new AMD motherboard,'' The 970 aura gaming pro '', which was the first official SLI 970 motherboard. It peaked my interest, tempting me to buy one at the price of many 990fx boards, with an MSRP of 119.99 $ only ! Is this the best motherboard for the price?

(Note: I will be using the pictures form CES 2016. Iphone photos look terrible).

Lets start off with the look. ASUS is known for their signature red and black gaming theme, and this motherboard is no different. You will notice there is no IO cover, as no AMD boards currently have those, but thats only me being nit-picky. The board's front RGB LED is controlled by Asus software and can be tuned with RGB strips for colors and patterns to be in sync. A well appreciated feature !


Now onto practicality. Being a 970 board I didn't expect this board to be a good overclock but I managed to get my 8320 to 4.5ghz stable, without screwing up the motherboard. The motherboard has 4 ram slots for a total of 32gb DDR3 ram in quad channel mode. It is also the first 970 motherboard to offer SLI, and even has an M.2 slot, something very rare on AMD boards.

The Most Beautiful Rainbow ever !

                                                                 SLI for 120$ ! In conclusion, you get an amazing motherboard with modern features that can keep up with the competition and Doesn't empty your wallet, including support for M.2 drives and SLI video cards, which is an amazingly odd feature on AMD boards. SO yes ! It is indeed,  one of the best Bangs for the buck !