Gigabyte Z97X-GAMING G1 WIFI-BK Motherboard
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,472 words · ~7 min read
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on the surface this motherboard appears to suffer from a bit of an identity
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crisis Gigabyte couldn't figure out how to Brand the thing it carries their
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traditional mainstream board Ultra durable branding their G1 gaming
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branding and like Black Edition in huge letters in the middle of the Box what
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the heck is this
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thing with its Factory tuning and data center DNA an Intel 730 series SSD is
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amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts all right so
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apparently I wasn't tall enough during the intro and Brandon gave me another
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Apple box to stand off on thanks for that Brandon the answer is all of the
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above this is by a considerable margin gigaby highest in z97 motherboard but
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before we get into that let's cover the accessories shall we in the Box you will
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find two-way three-way and four-way SLI Bridges yes the board uses a plx hub to
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give it quad Crossfire and SLI support a crossfire Bridge an IO Shield a wireless
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AC and Bluetooth combo PCIe card as well
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as an internal connector and antenna to go with that six braided SATA cables
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half with straight and half with angled connectors and finally a 3 and 1/2 in
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front USB module for your USB 3 in case your case doesn't have that all right
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and I guess there's also a manual stickers and a driver disc in there too
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on the board itself we'll kick things off with Aesthetics where Gigabyte has
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moved away from the green color scheme and guns and bullets branding elements
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towards a more subdued black gray and red color scheme that some will find
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attractive but others myself included will find uninspired in copycat I mean a
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red and black gaming motherboard we've never seen that before but you can
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hardly blame them for going with what obviously works right along with the
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more subdued practical looks comes a more subdued practical design you won't
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find any extra CPU power inputs and
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instead of an overbuilt 300 phase power
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design it's got a simple yet robust All Digital 8-phase CPU power design that is
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built for longevity rather than bling notable inclusions are the 10K black
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capacitors rated at 10,000 hours at 105°
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C and the 168 hour testing procedure
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that each and every one of these motherboards will go through before it
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makes it to your hands better QC is the
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kind of thing I don't mind paying more for especially given how little there is
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to differentiate one motherboard from another of these days the fan on the vrm
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heat sink from the Z87 equivalent is gone replaced by beefier or passive heat
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sinks but liquid cooling is still an option and Gigabyte has actually
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improved the flexibility of their solution significantly by providing G1
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quarter threaded holes instead of integrated barbs another thumbs up there
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CPU support is dictated by the LJ 1150 socket in Gigabyte figures you won't
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have any difficulty with a last generation Haswell chip a Haswell
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refresh code name Devil's Canyon chip or even an upcoming Broadwell process
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processor so z97 looks like a solid option for someone planning to build a
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system now then upgrade when Intel rolls out their new CPUs officially we've got
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dual Channel DDR3 RAM support up to 3200
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MHz but it should be noted that on hasbell CPUs maximum RAM frequency
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decreases as CPU frequency increases with overclocking so it's not a huge
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deal these days in the top right corner we'll find power reset and clear seimo
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switches along with a debug LED and contact points for reading onboard
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voltages with a multimeter rather than relying on soft Ware the 24 pin is in
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its ideal location along the right hand edge of the board with front USB 3 and
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an auxiliary SATA connector right beneath it make sure to plug that in if
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you're using more than two graphics cards on the board further down things
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get pretty interesting Gigabyte has added not one but two additional Marvel
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controllers to give this board a total of 10 SATA 36 GB per second ports and
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they've also implemented SATA Express which will consume two of the regular
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Intel SATA 3 ports should you decide to use that once SSD that support this new
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10 gbit standard become available at the bottom we find color-coded front panel
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connectors and physical switches to decide which of the two BIOS chips you
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want to use as well as whether you want to use dual BIOS at all although I'd
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recommend leaving that on the PCI Express layout of this board is what I
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would consider ideal not Everyone likes this spacing but here's why I like it
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you've got lots of space between the 16x
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slots here and here and you can cram four cards on the board all running in
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adex mode if you really want to by having the bottom card hang down a
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little bit and it does this without increasing the height of the board to an
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XL ATX form factor Love It audio has
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been a big Focus for Gigabyte since the beginning of the G1 series and it
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continues to be one here they're using nichon audio grade capacitors a gold
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shielded creative sound processor and a physically separated PCB in order to
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improve performance and reduce interference they've also thrown in gain
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adjustment switches for folks with difficult to drive headphones a
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swappable opamp socket if you're into that sort of thing and goldplated
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connectors on the back which won't improve audio quality but might help
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with longevity somewhat now things have
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gone really well for the layout of this board so far but Gigabyte bunged up the
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fan connectors a little bit in my mind look at pretty much any Modern
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Performance case and you'll see top mounted fans or at least mounts for them
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Gigabyte hasn't got any fan headers on basically the top half of the board
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they're here here here here here here and here which is perfect if your case
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has all of the fans in the front and the bottom a rare occurrence it's not a huge
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deal and fan extensions are cheap it's just something that I'd like to see
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improved rear IO is a strong point for the board PS2 is there for those random
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hardto diagnose issues the two USB 2.0 ports are Dack ports which supposedly
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provide more stable power and are good for USB sound cards not sure why we'd
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need two of those especially with the excellent onboard audio but I guess it
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saves me the trouble of peering back there to make sure I'm using the right
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one if I'm using a deck triple displays running DVI HDMI and DisplayPort are
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supported off the onboard graphics and then we find six USB 3 ports 2 GB
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Ethernet ports one Intel and one killer
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e2205 Network chip that enables packet prioritization for your most important
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applications this is a layout that I really like giving me the option of
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Intel or the killer one and then finally goldplated 7.1 audio ports as well as an
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optical audio port for good measure speaking of good measure I hope this
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video gave you a pretty good measure of the awkwardly named gab z97x gaming G1
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Wi-Fi BK Black Edition Uber clock I
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don't know whatever anyway it includes everything but the kitchen sync Hardware
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wise and even adds an updated easy UF ufi BIOS mode as well as a self-tuning
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overclocking feature within Gigabyte easz tune software but more importantly
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it adds more testing and validation so you're unlikely to end up with a lemon
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this is the kind of thing I really value these days and it's great to see
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Gigabyte raising the bar this way thanks for watching guys as usual the link to
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the pricing and availability for this product is in the video description below the like dislike and share buttons
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which you should use accordingly also in the video description is a support link
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where you can buy a cool t-shirt like this one give us a monthly contribution
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or change your Amazon bookmark so we get an affiliate Kickback whenever you buy
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stuff that helps us out a lot thanks again for watching and as always don't
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mean if you aren't already if you're subscribed already then clicking that will unsubscribe which is not actually
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very helpful