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Gigabyte X99-Gaming 5

Gigabyte X99-Gaming 5 Review – Now this is what we expect from an X99 board – check out the four fulllength PCIe lanes, ready to swallow your quad-GPU setup. One of the biggest strengths of X99 is the number of PCIe lanes, so it’s nice to see Gigabyte make full use of them.

Gigabyte X99-Gaming 5, A Mother of Board

Like the ASRock X99 board, Gigabyte has endowed its X99 beast with a single M.2 port, and it’s only of the x2 variety. Another SATAe port is included, while a whopping ten SATA 3 ports deliver enough room to mirror all of Pirate Bay if you have enough spare drives. Up to eight USB 3.0 and another eight USB 2.0 ports are available, provided all of the internal headers are utilised.

Gigabyte is still the only company to use high-quality PowIRstage ICs for its power circuitry, yet it’s only using a six stage power phase system. Helping to balance this out is the use of a quad-core SoundBlaster audio chipset, combined with an upgradable amp that the user can swap out. It’s one of the better onboard audio solutions we’ve tested. On the other hand, the reliance upon Killer’s E2201 chip for LAN is a shame, as we prefer Intel’s solution. We also love the use of a LED on the rear panel, making it super easy to see where you’re plugging stuff in a darkened gaming den.

Throw in extensive overclocking options, and we have an X99 board that we firmly approve of. Now if only it had a CPU worth installing in it, we’d recommend upgrading from that boring old i7 you’re running.