GIGABYTE B660I AORUS PRO

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
CASEBC1 (Open Benchtable)
MOTHERBOARDGIGABYTE B660I AORUS PRO DDR4 (paid link)
CPUIntel 12700K (paid link)
CPU COOLERNoctua NH-C14S (paid link)
PSU Corsair SF 600 Platinum (paid link)
RAMCrucial Ballistix, 16GB (2x8GB), 3600MHz, CL16 (paid link)
STORAGE1TB 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 COOLERCOMPATIBILITY
Thermalright AXP90-X47Y
Thermalright AXP90-X53Y
Thermalright AXP120-X67Y
Alpenföhn Black RidgeN (I/O panel shroud is too tall)
Scythe Big Shuriken 3 RevBY
Noctua NH-L9i-17XXY
Noctua NH-L12 Ghost EditionN (I/O panel shroud is too tall)
Noctua NH-L12SY (single orientation in 85mm mode only)
Noctua NH-C14SY
Noctua NH-U12AY
Noctua NH-D15SY
Noctua NH-D15Y
EK AIO Basic / D-RGBY (water pipes exit at the I/O panel shroud or RAM modules only)
ARCTIC Liquid Freezer II SeriesN

CONCLUSION

LIKEDDISLIKED
Good power deliverySingle M.2 slot
Good VRM thermalsNo CPU overclocking (thanks Intel)
Minimal design aestheticsLimited low profile cooler support
Pre-installed IO shieldOnly one full size fan header (two are mini-headers)
Motherboard backplate includedNo debug features
No BIOS / PCIe issues