Solid Motherboard for the price
review by
vmax65
I bought this motherboard to compliment my i5-8600K. I have used Gigabyte motherboards in the past and they have been more than good enough in terms of stability and longevity especially for what you get at the price.
The motherboard did not come with too much in terms of extra's, just some SATA connectors, a small manual (not as detailed as it could be), a G connector for helping connect power, HD etc. to front panel (this was useful), a CD with drivers (why no USB stick?) and a case badge...
In terms of looks, all I can say is for me it looks great with a black PCB and RGB in four seperate zones which look fantastic and have a whole load of modes for different effects. The board looks absolutly fantastic when running and you can customise to match any look that you are after. The board also has additional RGB connectors including RGBW to add more LED strips all controlled via the Gigabyte RGB Fusion software which works perfectly either through the bois or through the Gigabyte APP Center.
As far as connectivity is concerned, it has everything that is required for a fairly robust setup from 2 M.2 NVme ports full x4, 6 SATA 6GB/s connectors and a load of USB 3.1 (4 on the back panel) and USB 2.0 (2 on the back panel) with the type C 3.1 Gen 2 on the back panel as well. They also include a number of 3.1 and 2.0 internal headers as well. The rest is also pretty much standard with 3 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (support x16/x0/x0, x8/x8/x0, x8/x4/x4 modes) and 3 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots though the top one is the one I use for my GPU which is a 1080 GTX.
6 fan headers all dual use, the usual Gigabit LAN, no Wifi but not a problem for me as I always prefer a hard wired connection and to finish of, a DVI and HDMI connector on the back plate. which will probabley never to be used by me...but it is there if you ever have to fall back to the CPU's internal GPU in the 8600K.
Onto Audio which is one of the reasons I buy the Gigabyte boards with there AMP UP DAC coupled to the newest ALC1220 RealTek HD Audio codec... I have to admit, for the first time I am having problems in this area with occasional popping sounds which can be quiet frustrating. This may be a driver issue, but I have upgraded to the latest driver only yesterday and hopefully this will make a difference..I will update further on this.
Update on Audio. With the lates driver on the 23rd of November, I have had no problems at all so good job Gigabyte for listening to all the comments on the varous forums...
Okay, my setup consist of a 8600K, 16GB DDR4 3000Mhz Corsair Vengeance Ram, NVme M.2 Samsung drive and a MSI 1080 GTX Gaming X. I also have it all powered by a Corsair RM850 Power Supply. To cool the CPU I have a Antec M360 AIO which is a triple 120mm radiator closed loop water cooler.
The motherboard posted immediatly on first setup with the Bios being fairly easy to use. I instantly changed the CPU multiplyer to 48 and set XMP profile 1 to allow my Ram to run at 3000MHz and left everything else at auto... It worked first time with no problems and after running some stress testing which included Prime95 v26.6, RealBench and Intel XTU monitoring with Hardware Info, the temps were in the mid to high 20's degrees C at idle and at load around 60 degress C with no stability problems and a max vcore of 1.278v..so happy. I have tested to 4.9 and 5Ghz which both worked though I needed 1.376v but for long term use I am more than happy with 4.8GHz as overclocking is not something I have gotten my head around properly..though learning fast.
One final area is around the VRM's, of which I have heard and seen articles on as running very hot when overclocked. I have tested this and did not get a stress test reading higher than 70 degrees C at max load on 30 minute runs at 4.8GHz. I have fairly good airflow with a fan not to far away from the VRM's so they do recieve some air. This maybe an issue for overclocks in the 5GHz and above arena.
Overall I am quiet happy with this motherboard though I hope the audio is just a driver problem, otherwise this is a solid motherboard for the price.
Pros | Cons |
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Great price for what you get | Audio is now fixed with the lates driver released 23rd Nov |
Ratings