Comments Locked

27 Comments

Back to Article

  • todlerix - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link

    Bug report for gigabyte:

    EasyTune > Smart Quick Boost > Extreme it shows MHz instead of GHz
    http://i.imgur.com/4smTLHW.png
  • DanNeely - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link

    They lost me at creative audio for the gaming models.
  • just4U - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    oddly enough that's what won me over. Tired of Realtek Onboard or emulated variants thru Asus. The sound chip on the M3 (my current board) is performing like a champ. No regrets, and the board was $40 cheaper than The Asus equivalent.
  • K_Space - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    I'm pretty sure this audio signal separation within the PCB got reviewed here vs an ASUS board and it failed big time... hopefully they have addressed some of the issues surrounding it.
  • jwcalla - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link

    I will never do another motherboard with a fan.
  • just4U - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    Me either.. they "ALL" die over time or screw up making the system noisy.. lesson learned after a few 100 board installs.
  • grammatonF - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    Fan motors have improved quite a bit and this is a standard fitting fan so it's very easy to replace.
  • binarybrian - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    Wait, there's a couple of fans on those boards and they don't look all that standard to me. Besides, doesn't matter how much fan motors have improved it WILL die or start making terrible noises and at the most inconvenient time. You're welcome to them but I'm staying the hell away.
  • JonnyDough - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link

    I would, if they were more standardized and easy to swap.
  • adridu59 - Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - link

    The fan is just supplemental, it's silent and can be plugged off.
  • douglasman100 - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link

    I'm really digging the orange color scheme, but they lost me at a PLX chip for the higher end motherboard when they stated earlier you get better performance without one....
  • IanCutress - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link

    You get better performance (~1%) without the PLX in a single GPU scenario - but the Z87X-OC Force has a black PLX bypass (the Z87X-OC doesn't have a PLX) if you wanted that board and only to run one GPU. With two GPUs, there is almost no difference with and without the PLX, but once you hit three then the PLX can start to make sense over an x8/x4/x4 setup when you are pushing up the resolutions.

    The PLX also allows other cards to be used that require x8 bandwidth that are not GPUs to work alongside dual GPU setups.
  • AK_HAZE - Sunday, June 2, 2013 - link

    BEEP BEEP FAN DETECTED BEEP BEEP FAN DETECTED BEEP BEEP
  • adridu59 - Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - link

    The fan is silent and can be unplugged from the motherboard.
  • BlueReason - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    the camera work is getting me seasick.
  • Granseth - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    I have a feeling Anand is filming and talking at the same time. Seems like every time he is talking he can't focus on filming and the cameraworks is suffering.
    Maybe he should just keep the camera on a tripod all the time.
  • hasseb64 - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    Can you please stop filming with a handheld Iphone. Try also to compress vital information.
    I managed to watch 2 minutes with fast scroll.
    This is beyond low AnandTech!
  • jabber - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    That motherboard's looks pretty much sums up all that is wrong with motherboard cosmetics really.
  • grammatonF - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    Motherboard with a fan is an excellent idea. That one little fan will remove heat far more effectively than a case full of fans. My large coolermaster case has 6 x 120mm fans and my CPU PWM was very hot on load (4.9ghz OC). Have an 80mm fan over PWM now and the temp is 29c full load.
  • grammatonF - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    It's a standard fitting fan too so it's easy to replace.
  • chizow - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link

    I did not see the UD4 in the video, picked it up today from MC, sweet board!
  • Sabresiberian - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link

    It looks like mainboard manufacturers are putting better sound solutions on the MBs, but I still would rather use a discreet card, or as some of the posters here suggest, connect through my video card to a decent receiver. I'm skeptical that the second is a great solution in the we have to depend on Nvidia or AMD to write good sound drivers, but if I can get the performance I would like from the video card sound processing (or pass-through), it makes the expense of added sound solutions on MBs doubly useless to me.
  • waldojim42 - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link

    And again I feel like the only person who could care less about the analog audio.
    Here is a hint Gigabyte; Many of us rocking surround sound, have digital receivers. We don't need gold plated connections, upgradable op-amps, or Creative. We need Dolby Digital Live, and DTS Connect. A single fiber jack will do the rest.
  • JonnyDough - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link

    My comments:

    I love ITX. Can't wait to rock LAN parties with such a tiny box. What I want to see on ITX boards:

    High quality audio. Single gigabit NIC is fine. 4 USB ports is fine too, I still have no use for USB3.0. Overclocking is pointless to me considering the power in today's CPUs, but it's a fine feature for those who want it. It was fun and made sense on Athlon, but today it doesn't really get me much more performance.

    Longevity is great, considering that I won't be upgrading nearly as often (I made the jump from Opteron 185 OC'd - equal to a low end Core 2 Duo up to a Core i5 IVB and never really missed much). I'd love to start seeing seven year warranties. For a high quality ITX board with a great warranty I would spend $200. For a typical ATX board I won't spend more than around $100.

    It's good to see things like PS/2 ports finally being dropped off motherboards more and more. Those are so archaic they have cavemen laughing. The orange and neon green are fine, but obviously won't meet everyone's tastes. What we need are options. Make PCI-E and memory headers customizable/swappable. It's one more thing to sell us, and it gives us options. Try adding a bit of LED accent lighting to the board, just to give it a cool factor. Let users push a button to switch between colors. :)
  • Jaaap - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link

    This video is great. Real cool dude from Gigabyte that actually knows stuff.
  • hobobaba - Tuesday, June 4, 2013 - link

    Thanks Anand for a video review. Please post all your reviews in videos. I feel most of us come to your site to know ( but don't know why we need to know).
  • IceStorm - Friday, June 7, 2013 - link

    I tried a G1.Sniper 5 with an i7 4770 as the base for Tri-SLI GTX Titan system. The board had a bent back corner where the back plate cluster was such that the PS2 and USB ports didn't fit properly up against the I/O plate. A brand new Windows 7 install BSODed every time Steam tried to update.

    This was all less than a week after I tried a G1.Sniper 3 with an existing i7 3770K. That board couldn't even finish POSTing. I'm sorry, but someone over at Gigabyte really needs to get a handle on QA.

    I ended up with an Asus Maximus V Extreme for $350 AR and paired it with the aforementioned i7 3770K. Tri-SLI works great. No fuss, no muss, no having to move it from case to test bench and back to case.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now