Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 Motherboard Review: Fun and Flexibility
Test System and Testing Procedures
| Item | Name |
| Processor | AMD Ryzen 1800X (AMD motherboards), Intel Core i7-7700K (Intel motherboards) |
| CPU Cooler |
Noctua NH-D15S |
| Power Supply |
Corsair HX850W 80 Plus Gold PSU |
| Memory | Kingston HyperX Fury DDR4 2x8GB @ 2666MHz 15-17-17-35 2T |
| Storage | Silicon Power S80 240GB SSD (OS), ADATA SP550 240GB (SATA), Patriot Hellfire 480GB M.2 NVMe (M.2), 2x ADATA SP440 240GB in Silverstone TS231UC RAID-0 mode(USB3.1 Gen1 and Gen 2) |
| Graphics | Gigabyte GTx 960 Windforce 3x OC |
| Router | Cisco E3200 stock firmware with 2x 6ft Cat5E cables for network testing |
| Motherboard(s) | Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 (F5 BIOS), ASUS Crosshair VI (1504), MSI B250M-Mortar (2.00), AORUS Z270X-Gaming 5 (F4 BIOS) |
| Operating System | Windows 10 Pro x64 (1607) |
Latest working BIOS, updates and drivers were used at the time of the review. Each test was conducted at least three times for accuracy with the exception of PCMark 8 which already does three sets per benchmark run. *All performance benchmarks in this review and all reviews going forward will be using the Windows 10 operating system.
System Benchmarks
- Aida64 Engineer
- CineBench R15
- PCMark 8
- WinRAR
- 7-zip
- x.264 FHD
Gaming Benchmarks
- 3DMark Firestrike (Default)
- Unigine Heaven 4.0 (Max Settings, 1920 x 1080)
- Bioshock Infinite (Lowest Settings @ 640 x 480, Max Settings @ 1920 x 1080)
System Benchmarks
The AIDA64 suite has various benchmarks for CPU, FPU and memory testing: CPU Queen is an integer benchmark that tests branch prediction and misprediction penalties. CPU PhotoWorxx tests the SIMD integer arithmetic execution units of the CPU and the memory subsystem. CPU ZLib is a compression benchmark that tests the combined CPU and memory performance. CPU AES is a multi-core encryption benchmark that uses Advanced Encryption Standard data encryption. CPU Hash is an integer benchmark that measures performance using SHA1 hashing algorithm. FPU Julia measures single precision FP, FPU Mandel measures double precision FP, FPU SinJulia measures extended precision FP while FPU VP8 is a video compression test utilizing the FPU Julia fractal module.
Using AIDA64, memory performance is benchmarked, including latency tests as well as read, write and copy speeds.
MAXON’s Cinebench R15 runs two sets of benchmarks, a processor test for the CPU and an OpenGL test for the graphics processor. The 3D rendering workload is based on Maxon’s Cinema 4D, a program utilized by movie production studios world wide for special effects so it is a semi-synthetic test closer to real-world 3D graphics benchmarking.
PCMark 8 simulates typical home-related workloads including web browsing, gaming, photo editing, video chat and productivity. Like Futuremark’s 3DMark, a numerical score is generated from the combination of semi-synthetic tests.
x264 is a popular free software library for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format. x264 FHD measures how efficient a system is in encoding H.264 video and produces results in frames-per-second. H.265/HEVC video encoding is the future of video able to compress significantly larger resolution videos including 4K and make streaming feasible. The downside is that hardware support is still few and far between so processing requirement is steeper than current H.264/AVC standards. x.265 is an open-source implementation of the H.265 standard and x.265 HD benchmark tests the CPU’s ability to process an HEVC video.
Handbrake is free open-source video transcoder that can convert various video file formats to compatible video files for other typical media viewing applications such as in an iPhone or Android tablet. A 52:55 1.1GB H.264 MKV file was used converted to the built-in iPod Preset (5G Support), then manually timed. The results are in seconds and the lower number is the better result.
7-zip is an open source (GNU) compression program utilizing LZMA method as the default. WinRAR on the other hand is a Windows version of a popular compression software created by Eugene Roshal in 1993, widely used for its flexibility. Both have built in benchmarks that measure the system’s compression and decompression capability.
The Aorus Z270X-Gaming 5 ????? on first site?
Nice review, this is the motherboard I finally decided on for my new build. It seemed like a very good value and had what I was looking for in a mobo. I am so happy the Ryzen processors can overclock on both the midrange B350 and high end X370 boards, it means you can save quite a bit of money if you are not going for a top end build.
Are the mounting holes a little different from standard ATX? for the holes closer to the right of the board.
Thank you for pointing it out. It seems I have forgotten to paste the entire last paragraph of the first page from the last template I used. It has been corrected now.
I have this board with an R7 1700x and 2×8 GB Corsair Vengeance at 3200mhz. The memory works at 2933 cl 16-16-16-36 without problems. I didn’t see nothing like this board till now, not even a bluescreen in more than 2 weeks of usage, with all the drivers and programs i tried, and the Windows boots in 5 seconds with an Intel 600p Nvme 512 gb… it’s incredible… My last board was an Asus M5A99X Evo R2.0 (a very good board too), but this one seems like from other league.
I have the mATX version of this board (AB350M G3). It’s rock solid running my R7 1700 at 3.9GHz and my G.Skill 16gb kit at 3200 cl14 (Bios version F2). I might be able to push my CPU overclock higher, but the voltage is already at 1.344, so I decided not to bother.