The B660I AORUS PRO is mid-range Mini-ITX motherboard from Gigabyte. The board features 8+1+1 digital VRM, PCIe 4.0 for graphics, single 4.0 M.2 slot, WiFi 6 & BT5.
KEY FEATURES
| 12th Gen Intel® Core™ Series Processors Supported |
| Dual Channel Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 2 DIMMs, RAM Overclocking |
| Direct 8+1+1 Phases Digital VRM Solution with 90A SPS |
| Shielded Memory Routing for Better Memory Overclocking |
| Extended MOSFET Heatsink and Multi-Layered PCH M.2 Heatsink, Aluminum Baseplate |
| WIFI 6 802.11ax 2T2R & BT5 with AORUS Antenna |
| Intel® 2.5GbE LAN with Bandwidth Management |
| 1x PCIe 4.0*x4 M.2 with Thermal Guard |
| Rear USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C® and Front USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C® |
| Pre-installed IO Shield |
| RGB FUSION 2.0 with Multi-Zone Addressable LED Light Show Design, Support Addressable LED & RGB LED Strips |
| Smart Fan 6 Features Multiple Temperature Sensors, Hybrid Fan Headers with FAN STOP |
| Q-Flash Plus BIOS updates without Installing the CPU, Memory and Graphics Card |
TESTING
All testing was carried out using the following system in 20°C room ambient temperature.
| TEST SYSTEM | BC1T OPEN TESTBENCH |
| CASE | BC1 (Open Benchtable) |
| MOTHERBOARD | GIGABYTE B660I AORUS PRO DDR4 (paid link) |
| CPU | Intel 12700K (paid link) |
| CPU COOLER | Noctua NH-C14S (paid link) |
| PSU | Corsair SF 600 Platinum (paid link) |
| RAM | Crucial Ballistix, 16GB (2x8GB), 3600MHz, CL16 (paid link) |
| STORAGE | 1TB M.2 NVME (paid link) |
The motherboard features unlocked power limit and beefier power delivery, so you shouldn’t experience any issues with reduced performance in heavily multithreaded applications on higher end CPUs like Intel’s 12700K.
COOLER COMPATIBILITY
GIGABYTE’s B660I AORUS PRO DDR4 is compatible with most Noctua coolers & AIOs.
| CPU COOLER | COMPATIBILITY |
| Thermalright AXP90-X47 | Y |
| Thermalright AXP90-X53 | Y |
| Thermalright AXP120-X67 | Y |
| Alpenföhn Black Ridge | N (I/O panel shroud is too tall) |
| Scythe Big Shuriken 3 RevB | Y |
| Noctua NH-L9i-17XX | Y |
| Noctua NH-L12 Ghost Edition | N (I/O panel shroud is too tall) |
| Noctua NH-L12S | Y (single orientation in 85mm mode only) |
| Noctua NH-C14S | Y |
| Noctua NH-U12A | Y |
| Noctua NH-D15S | Y |
| Noctua NH-D15 | Y |
| EK AIO Basic / D-RGB | Y (water pipes exit at the I/O panel shroud or RAM modules only) |
| ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II Series | N |
CONCLUSION
| LIKED | DISLIKED |
| Good power delivery | Single M.2 slot |
| Good VRM thermals | No CPU overclocking (thanks Intel) |
| Minimal design aesthetics | Limited low profile cooler support |
| Pre-installed IO shield | Only one full size fan header (two are mini-headers) |
| Motherboard backplate included | No debug features |
| No BIOS / PCIe issues |