GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 5 LGA 1150 Motherboard Review @ [H]

GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 5 LGA 1150 Motherboard Review - We evaluate GIGABYTE’s G1.Sniper 5 in an attempt to see if GIGABYTE hit the target or missed its mark. It comes prepared to water cool the chipset as well as a robust air cooling system on the motherboard's power components if you wish to go sans water. Along with 9 fan headers down on the PCB, it should support about any cooling you want.

Great review.
The board looks pretty good.
I just have a strong dislike for the dopey chipset (south bridge) cover.
I realize this is a "sniper" kinda thing, but it's still dopey. This one at least beats the bullet theme they had a while ago. (that looked like crayons)

Otherwise a great implementation.

Great review, as always!

I've been using the G1.Sniper 5 in my main rig for a while without any issues (stability or otherwise). There a still a few quirks with the BIOS but is as come a long way from the initial release. Plus it's not like you are spending all your time tweaking it. But I still don’t understand why they cannot get the DPC latency issues sorted out...

I agree with magoo, the whole 'Sniper' thing is lame. At least Gigabyte did a complete 180o with its new Z97X (G1) gaming boards.

A quick not about the included software suite. You can download new versions on the Gigabyte site (from any Z97X motherboards pages, but it's compatible with series 8 and 9 chipsets). It's still not as good as what Asus is offering but it's getting better.

Link in the conclusion of the article doesn't point to here.

I would think for that price it would also support Wireless AC.

I wouldn't buy this if your want to run Linux or SteamOS on it as the Creative Sound Core3D is not even support so the way see it doesn't waste your money on it

cageymaru said:

Link in the conclusion of the article doesn't point to here.

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Fixed. Thanks!

magoo said:

Great review.
The board looks pretty good.
I just have a strong dislike for the dopey chipset (south bridge) cover.

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It looks like shit.

Between Gigabyte's snot green plastic and Asus's gold power ranger color scheme it's like they're competing to see who can come up with the most fugly designs possible. Who are these products for? Rich 13-year-olds?

DeathFromBelow said:

It looks like shit.

Between Gigabyte's snot green plastic and Asus's gold power ranger color scheme it's like they're competing to see who can come up with the most fugly designs possible. Who are these products for? Rich 13-year-olds?

Click to expand...

Well the ASUS Z97 boards have done the black and gold color scheme far better. The gold is only present on the heat sinks now. As for the black and green on the G1 Sniper, I actually like it. Too many motherboards are all black and red these days. I don't care for the south bridge heat sink either, but it is better than previous designs. The bullet design and HK-MK23 SOCOM shaped heat sinks were retarded looking.

DeathFromBelow said:

Between Gigabyte's snot green plastic and Asus's gold power ranger color scheme it's like they're competing to see who can come up with the most fugly designs possible. Who are these products for? Rich 13-year-olds?

Click to expand...

I've read in an interview with a Gigabyte (or ASUS) rep that it has something to do with the Asian market where the gold (and the red) theme are much appreciated. Since it now represents the majority of boards shipments, it's easy to see why they went that way.

8 month owner here, let me supplement the review a bit.

I've been using this board since Haswell was released. Its running my 4770K at 4.5GHz and the memory is at 2400MHz. You forgot to mention the single reason this board is worth purchasing over the ASUS competitor. There was a 3 month period after Haswell's release during which this was available and the ASUS wasn't.

Beware SoundBlaster Core is software only!

I put my X-Fi back in for hardware decoding. Find out more here: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/05/01/sound_blaster_recon3d_fatal1ty_card_review/10#.U2zPqCiZtV4

Beware fake PWM!

The 4pin PWM connectors all over the board are fake despite being advertised as PWM. The CPU header is the only one with actual PWM. The others run the 4th pin at max (100% PWM speed) and vary the input voltage via the software. I finally got the software working (only install AppCenter followed by Easytune for the fans) so I have excellent fan control in Windows, but not any other OS and not without the software running. The other option is to buy a few PWM splitters. ASUS is guilty of the same thing on my 7 series motherboard.

If you ignore all of that, and you ignore how clunky Smart Fan is, and you ignore Windows only, it does actually give you excellent control of the fans. One might argue that their weirdo voltage adjustment ability is superior to PWM given it only needs a 3 pin fan. They've basically built a software controlled rheostate into the chip. You can define whatever fan profile you can imagine for 5 of the headers.

Beware UEFI resolution issues over 1080P. I have a 2560x1600 monitor with no scaler and the UEFI output resolution is terrible. I use it in the old bios mode instead as there are more options in that mode. If you have a scaler you might not have this problem.

Latest software:

Gigabyte like most MB manufacturers sucks at keeping their website up to date. The closest thing they have to a forum is the following where you will find the latest BIOSes as well as the lastest drivers. The threads are updated quite frequently.

http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/28441-gigabyte-latest-beta-bios.html
http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyt...system-info-benchmarking-stability-tools.html

DO NOT UPDATE THE BIOS FROM WINDOWS with their utility. Always put the bios on a USB stick, enter BIOS, and select update bios from there (or use PCDOS). BIOS updates will wipe out your saved profile settings, so write everything down.

NIC:

It also has an Intel NIC which is better. Disable the Killer(Marvell) NIC and use the Intel as it is faster.

Color:

Several people have commented on the color. Keep in mind it is identical to the green Nvidia uses so it matches quite nicely if you have several Nvidia cards.

Onboard fan:

My last fan on a motherboard quickly became noisy and died (RIP ABIT). I've been running this board almost 8 months now and the onboard fan is as good as new. I think its a very nice addition especially if you plan to watercool the CPU.

My conclusion:

Should you buy this board? Do you have 3+ Nvidia GPUs, use Windows, and want to match the green color? Yes. Otherwise get the ASUS equivalent based on their better fan software.

good:
@least this Gigabyte had the sense to add a premium sound solution since (imho) the target buyer would be running some quad video card solution taking up all the expansion card real-estate.

bad:
10 SATA connectors without Hardware RAID or an external inifiniband HBA port
2 pretty poor performing NICs
Wifi without 802.11ac support

ugly:
Not the best OCer
buggie uEFI

Mobo makers keep missing the target. I feel like i'm getting forced to pay for features I don't want in order to get the features I do want. Just like the Cable TV companies forcing crappy channels down my throat.

DoubleParadoxx said:

8 month owner here, let me supplement the review a bit.


Beware SoundBlaster Core is software only!

Click to expand...

ASUS does the same thing in the ROG series....they tout a revolutionary sound solution and it's just software......nothing new or better......I use an old X-Fi card myself.

ecktt said:

good:
@least this Gigabyte had the sense to add a premium sound solution since (imho) the target buyer would be running some quad video card solution taking up all the expansion card real-estate.

bad:
10 SATA connectors without Hardware RAID or an external inifiniband HBA port
2 pretty poor performing NICs
Wifi without 802.11ac support

ugly:
Not the best OCer
buggie uEFI

Mobo makers keep missing the target. I feel like i'm getting forced to pay for features I don't want in order to get the features I do want. Just like the Cable TV companies forcing crappy channels down my throat.

Click to expand...

Well I had some thoughts about your post.

10 SATA connectors without Hardware RAID or an external inifiniband HBA port

GIGABYTE is notorious for adding a ridiculous amount of SATA ports using standard low grade integrated chipsets like the Marvell controllers. Frankly few companies will do anything else. Most companies don't bother to give you so many ports though as you won't need them and it drives the cost up. GIGABYTE does it to 1 up the competition on spec sheets. That's it.

2 pretty poor performing NICs

I've stated before that this test is pretty rough on NICs in general and never shows the theoretical maximums you could get from these cards. I also leave all NICs in their default configuration. I wouldn't say these are poor performing as they are in line with all the rest of the integrated controllers out there.

Wifi without 802.11ac support

Agreed.

As far as being ugly goes, the black and green is fine as far as I'm concerned. The chipset cooler is ugly but I'd cover it with video cards so I wouldn't care too much. As for the UEFI, I sort of agree. I've had lots of issues with GIGABYTE's UEFI. Many times they fix an issue only for them to break the same thing they just fixed on the very next board in the series. They aren't horrible by any stretch but they are absolutely always falling just short of excellence due to simple details they easily overlook.

When I saw the color scheme my first thought was DFI LanParty board and does it glow under a UV light. Am I aging myself here?

i wouldn't buy this board for one reason: active chipset cooling

i fucking HATE those itty bitty fans on the chipsets when they start to go out, they get REALLY noisy.

are they easy to replace? sometimes. this one doesn't look like it would be terribly difficult....but that's not the point.

i don't want to have to keep replacing shitty fans on my motherboard when they start to go out....and they WILL go out.