A new choice for winter gaming: Gigabyte B860M AORUS ELITE ICE review

Foreword:

Although the Spring Festival has not yet arrived, the Spring Festival Gala in the technology world has quietly arrived. With the successful conclusion of the 2025 International Consumer Electronics Show, the global technology industry once again ushered in a new era. years of innovation. Every year, CES brings together scientific and technological achievements from all over the world and in many fields. I believe many technology enthusiasts have feasted their eyes on it. Intel, which has always been at the forefront of technology, also launched a number of products based on CPU built for the mobile platform, and at the same time, the new Intel The B860 chipset has also come to the preheating stage, and major motherboard manufacturers are also launching their own B860 motherboards in full swing. This time we ordered the download hardware group and were lucky enough to receive this B860M AORUS ELITE WIFI6E ICE motherboard from Gigabyte, so let us Let’s take a look at the unique charm of this motherboard!

Appearance display

As a standard compact m-ATX board, the B860M AORUS ELITE WIFI6E ICE is very delicate and compact, and the pure white sprayed PCB and silver-white printed metal heat dissipation armor also complement each other and enhance It not only improves the visual effect, but also takes into account the heat dissipation performance of the motherboard. And thanks to the simple board shape, the B860M AORUS ELITE WIFI6E ICE is compatible with most mainstream chassis on the market, giving you more room to consider when choosing a chassis. The pure white board design is paired with a compact sea view room chassis. Definitely the first choice for tabletop style!

Of course, B860M AORUS ELITE WIFI6E ICE is not only outstanding in appearance, but also in terms of stacking materials. Gigabyte has also put a lot of effort into it. It has 12 phases of CPU power supply plus 1 phase of core display power supply and 2 phases of auxiliary power supply. A total of 15 phases of power supply design make it Whether it is equipped with Intel Core Ultra 5 245K or Intel Core Ultra 7 265K, it is more than enough.

　With At the same time, the four onboard DDR5 DIMM slots can provide up to a single 64 GB and four 256 DIMM slots. GB of memory capacity supports memory frequency calibration up to 9200MT/s, and combined with GIGABYTE's unique AI D5 black technology 2.0 technology, it can further increase memory bandwidth and reduce memory latency, adding to the experience of daily work and gaming and entertainment. In the actual testing session, we will also test the frame rate improvement of some competitive games using D5 black technology.

In terms of expandability, B860M AORUS ELITE WIFI6E ICE is equipped with one M.2 hard drive slot that supports PCI-E 5.0 and two M.2 hard drive slots that support PCI-E 4.0. There are a total of three M.2 hard drive expansion slots, and the top is also covered with an integrated The metal heat dissipation armor not only meets the user's expansion needs for high-speed storage, but also takes into account the heat dissipation performance. Not only that, the two PCI-E x16 slots equipped on the motherboard also provide rich expansion possibilities for multiple graphics cards, SSD expansion cards, audio processing cards, network expansion cards, etc., greatly broadening the user's upgrade space.

Moreover, there are many thoughtful designs that can be seen everywhere on the motherboard, such as the quick-release button for the graphics card in the main slot, the quick-release buckle for the M.2 hard drive and armor, the quick-release WIFI antenna, etc. . There is also a multi-functional Debug area that is convenient for users to troubleshoot problems during installation, including multi-function buttons, Debug LED lights, and power buttons to protect the user's experience.

Backplane IO part, B860M AORUS ELITE WIFI6E ICE is equipped with 2 USB 3.2 Gen 2 interfaces, 1 USB4 Type-C interface, 4 USB 3.2 Gen 1 interfaces, and 4 USB 2.0 interfaces, which greatly facilitates users to connect various peripherals and storage devices , to meet the usage needs in different scenarios. Moreover, the motherboard also provides a DP 2.1 interface that supports a resolution of up to 3840x2160@144 Hz and three audio interfaces integrated with Realtek audio chips, which can bring users the ultimate audio-visual experience and eliminate the trouble of future upgrades. And 2.5GbE wired network and Wi-Fi 6E wireless network connections are also available, allowing users to flexibly choose between wired and wireless.

Installed display

In order to check the overall performance of the motherboard, we also used the configuration in the picture above to build a pure white ocean view room test platform, and all accessories support RGB Fusion. Users can use GIGABYTE's official GIGABYTE Control Center (GCC) software to achieve unified lighting effect control of the entire machine and create an advanced gaming atmosphere.

Thanks to Core Ultra 200S Thanks to the ultra-high energy consumption ratio of the processor and GIGABYTE's intelligent fan control, the whole machine performed well in the 30-minute single-baked FPU test. The B860M AORUS ELITE WIFI6E ICE kept this Intel Core Ultra 5 245K processor running smoothly with its excellent power supply. When running at full load and full power consumption, there were no blue screens, crashes, overheating or frequency reduction, and it was very stable. At the same time, the temperature control performance of the motherboard is also very good. Even in a closed chassis environment, it does not exceed 35°C, which lays a solid foundation for the future productivity and gaming scenarios of the machine!

Game test

Coming to the actual game testing session, we selected several popular 3A games to conduct actual game testing on the entire machine, including "Cyberpunk 2077" and "Black Myth: Wukong". A game that tests the performance of the entire machine. At the same time, in order to simulate the normal playing scenarios of most players, we chose to conduct the frame rate test of the game at 2K resolution, using the advanced picture presets in the game, turning on DLSS quality gear and frame generation, and turning on medium ray tracing.

Judging from the results, the five games tested all have very good frame rate performance. Even in "Cyberpunk 2077", known as the "graphics card killer", high image quality, medium The average frame rate of close to 100 and the 1% Low frame rate of 80 under ray tracing settings are also excellent, not to mention that several other games can achieve outstanding results of over 100 frames. It can be seen that this game console built with B860M AORUS ELITE WIFI6E ICE has not affected the overall hardware performance due to the potential barrel effect. If you want to smoothly play various 3A masterpieces on the market, this B860M AORUS ELITE WIFI6E ICE will It will become a good choice for players to install.

As mentioned above, B860M AORUS ELITE WIFI6E ICE also supports GIGABYTE's exclusive "D5 Black Technology" technology, which can further increase memory bandwidth and reduce memory latency. It can significantly improve some memory-sensitive competitive games. We have also selected 5 popular competitive games on the market. Games for actual testing.

Judging from the actual measurement results, after turning on XMP and D5 black technology, the average frames and 1% Low frames of each game have been improved to varying degrees. Among them, "Operation Delta", "Fearless Contract" and "PUBG" have the most significant improvements, with average frame rate increases of around 17% to 19%, while "CS2" and "Everlasting" also achieved frame rate increases of 4% to 5%. It can be seen that this B860M AORUS ELITE WIFI6E ICE equipped with Gigabyte D5 black technology can protect players from the trouble caused by screen lag in the game competition, improve the smoothness of the game screen, and allow players to catch it earlier. A chance to win.

Summary

With the winter vacation and New Year approaching, more and more players are in urgent need of a brand new gaming machine to enrich their holiday entertainment experience. Then this B860M AORUS ELITE from Gigabyte The WIFI6E ICE motherboard will be a strong competitor in players’ installation choices. Whether it is the exquisite board shape, popular pure white appearance, solid workmanship materials, rich interface expansion, and top-level technical support from GIGABYTE, these are all reasons for players to purchase, not to mention GIGABYTE. It also provides all users with considerate services such as 4-year warranty, 1-year replacement, personal repairs, and personal damage repairs. There is no need to worry about after-sales issues. The experience of using the machine can be said to be full!