Gigabyte Hits An Incredible DDR5-7950 On Aorus Motherboards Without Crazy Cooling

Gigabyte is apparently boasting about the superlative memory performance of its new Z790 Aorus Xtreme and Master motherboards for Intel 13th Gen Core ‘Raptor Lake’ processors. And when paired with TeamGroup’s T-Force Delta RGB DDR5 7200 memory modules, these new Aorus motherboards were able to push DDR5 memory frequencies to a smoking-fast 7950MHz. Adding to this already impressive feat, the memory didn’t need LN2 or even liquid cooling – all the system required was a quality air cooler.

When DDR5 started to hit the mainstream market with the arrival of Intel 12th Gen Core ‘Alder Lake’ processors, we saw quite a few memory overclocking records in the region of DDR5-8000 to DDR5-8704. However, the overclockers of the era used ‘extreme’ methods to achieve these speeds, such as liquid nitrogen ‘LN2’ cooling in the linked example. Aorus and TeamGroup achieved their feat with a humble air cooler. It would have been good of Aorus to show a photo of the test rig, but the marketing department missed the opportunity.

So, there must be something different or special about the Aorus / TeamGroup gear for it to be able to achieve such incredible speeds without a tank full of LN2 nearby? According to Gigabyte’s press release, innovations have been made in both the motherboard and memory modules to facilitate the blistering – but not scorching – speeds.

The success of the PC tech teammates comes courtesy of a new shielded memory routing design. “By optimizing memory trace width, length, and style from HPC simulation to actual implementation, overall impedance is lowered between CPU memory controller and memory modules,” explains Gigabyte. “Further with low signal-loss PCB, signal loss inside PCB and external interference are greatly reduced which can maintain high-speed DDR5 signal transmission to achieve higher DDR5 speed.” Gigabyte’s work in HPC and server design sounds like it has dripped down to its consumer gear, and we should welcome it, though there will surely be price premiums to pay.