Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 3 X299 Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts

Price

Given that the Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 9 costs £529.99, the Gaming 3 seems a bit of a bargain at just £299.99. Yes, this is still an expensive motherboard, and let’s not even start on the fact the i9-7900X we used is almost £1000. However, it’s a competitive price for a new X299 motherboard, and its performance is within shouting distance of the flagship model when overclocked. It’s certainly going to appeal to anyone building a high-end gaming system, without the need for the extra storage and more advanced overclocking of the Gaming 9.

Overview

Skylake-X has gotten off to an interesting start. Sure, many people aren’t thrilled with the price range of the new 10-core CPU, but when it comes down to it, we can’t argue with the performance. It’s a very fast chip that’s sure to compliment any high-end system build. Of course, the main focus today is the X299 motherboards. The Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 9 was incredible, able to squeeze a lot of performance out of the flagship i9-7900X CPU and deliver some solid overclocks. However, the Gaming 3 is £200 cheaper and still managed to deliver great performance that was almost as fast as the Gaming 9. Of course, there’s some disparity in terms of features between both boards, but the Gaming 3 has more than enough perks for your typical high-end gaming PC user.

BIOS Performance?

As we saw in the stock tests, the Gaming 3 performed spectacularly compared to the Gaming 9. I spoke with a representative at Gigabyte to clarify this and it simply seems to be a case of the BIOS on the Gaming 3 being newer than that of the Gaming 9 we tested. The voltage on the CPU boost was a little high and by tweaking it, temperatures are now around 10c lower at stock and the chip can maintain its higher clock speeds for longer; something that should also be true with the Gaming 9 with a newer BIOS. Basically, this platform is brand new, a few tweaks will be needed over the coming weeks. Either way, that doesn’t detract from the fact the Gaming 3 performed extremely well at stock clocks.

RGB, USB, and More

Added value comes in many forms for this motherboard. You’ve got RGB lighting built into the board, as well as headers for external RGB lighting strips, which is great for customisation. Of course, you also have Optane support, USB Typc-C, support for up to 3 x GPUs, powerful built-in audio, and M.2/U.2 support. Overall, that ticks all the major boxes for any modern high-end system build. If you don’t need the extreme features of the more expensive AORUS Gaming 9, the Gaming 3 is a very tempting option for anyone investing in Skylake-X.

Pros

• Skylake-X Support
• Robust overclocking capabilities
• Optane Ready
• Competitive storage and networking performing
• Great for gaming systems
• Armoured DIMM and PCIe slots
• Nice aesthetics
• RGB lighting
• Excellent overall performance

Cons

• None

“One of the best price vs performance X299 motherboards on the market right now. It looks stunning, performs great and has a solid feature set. The Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 3 is a tempting product for anyone investing in Skylake-X.”