Gigabyte’s newest motherboard is trying to stand out by incorporating some actual wood onto the product.
On Friday, the company announced the X870E AERO X3D WOOD, which looks like it could fit in a home furniture catalog.
The AM5 motherboard appears to be similar to the $379 X870E AORUS ELITE X3D, which launched in September. The key difference is that it adopts a “wood aesthetic” along the product’s edges, including over the Voltage Regulator Module panel and on the M.2 heatsink.
(Gigabyte)
“Crafted for the connoisseur, it harmonizes the organic beauty of wood grain with uncompromising performance,” Gigabyte says. “Its natural wood aesthetic evokes the warmth of home, transforming cold technology into something inviting belongs in your living room.”
Adding to the home furniture feel is how the motherboard contains “premium leather pull tabs” over the M.2 and SATA memory slots. Gigabyte hasn’t said what kind of wood it exactly uses. But the YouTube channel Gear Seekers got its hands on a unit, and suspects it incorporates bamboo wood.
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Of course, the motherboard’s wood aesthetic could be hard to notice inside a fully built PC. Still, the product promises to offer top-tier performance, according to Gigabyte. As an AM5 board, the product has been designed to run AMD’s latest Ryzen 7000 to 9000 CPUs.
For now, it remains unclear how much the product will cost and when it’ll exactly launch in the US. We’ve reached out to Gigabyte and we’ll update the story if we hear back. But it’s not the first PC product to try to appeal to consumers with wood. Case maker Lian Li has also released a desktop chassis that features a wood trim.
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I’ve been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I’m currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country’s technology sector.
Since 2020, I’ve covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I’ve combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink’s cellular service.
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