Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 3 X299 Motherboard Review

Introduction Gigabyte AORUS Gaming 3 We're back on our X299 test bench today, with the glorious looking Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 3 motherboard. This high-end motherboard comes with support for the latest Intel Skylake-X processors, including the new i9-7900X. While we've already tested the extremely powerful and feature-packed Gigabyte Aorus Gaming 9, at £299, the Gaming 3 is around £200 cheaper than its big brother! Will that big price difference give us a big difference in performance? We're certainly eager to find out! This motherboard may not have as many features as the Gaming 9, however, it's not exactly lacking in features either. With support for 8 x DDR4 DIMMs, USB Type C and A, Optane Support, RGB lighting, M.2 and more, it's sure to be a great start to any high-end gaming PC. Intel X299 Gaming motherboard with RGB Fusion, Digital LED strip support, Dual M.2, 120dB SNR ALC1220, Intel Gaming LAN, USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C/A Supports Intel® Core™ X-series Processor Family Quad Channel Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 8 DIMMs, DDR4400+(OC) Intel® Optane™ Memory Ready ASMedia 3142 USB 3.1 Gen 2 with USB Type-C™ and Type-A 3-Way Graphics Support with Dual Armor and Ultra Durable™ Design Server-Class Digital Power Design ALC1220 120dB SNR HD Audio with Smart Headphone AMP and WIMA audio capacitor RGB FUSION supports Digital LED and RGBW Light Strips Smart Fan 5 features Multiple Temperature Sensors and Hybrid Fan Headers with FAN STOP Dual Ultra-Fast M.2 with PCIe Gen3 x4 interface NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 U.2 support by optional adaptor Intel® GbE LAN Gaming Network with cFosSpeed Internet Accelerator Software Anti-Sulfur Resistor Design Ultra Durable™ 25KV ESD and 15KV Surge LAN Protection Lightning-Fast Intel® Thunderbolt™ 3 AIC Support GIGABYTE UEFI DualBIOS™ APP Center Including EasyTune™ and Cloud Station™ Utilities What AORUS had to Say "The AORUS X299 enthusiast motherboards are faster and more powerful than any motherboard the world has ever seen. With an aggressively redesigned armor and thermal heatsinks its sure to turn heads and catch eyes. Performance is no stranger to AORUS, with exotic cooling and an ability to be tuned to peak performance AORUS motherboards will exceed expectations." - Gigabyte AORUS View the complete specifications here. A Closer Look The Gaming 3 is one fantastic looking motherboard. It has a black PCB with grey detailing to give it some visual flair. The blackened hardware is nice too, but that's highlighted further thanks to the Armor metal work on the PCI and DIMM slots. Of course, we've got the latest X299 chipset and the LGA2066 socket. It's a freaking huge socket too, and will support the full range of Skylake-X chips, from the budget models, right up to the current flagship i9-7900 10-Core 20-Thread model. There are 8 x DIMM slots with quad-channel support, all fitted with Armor. Power Delivery Above the CPU, you'll find a robust looking power delivery system. The chokes and caps are covered with a thick metal heat sink. Of course, all this hardware should allow for more stable overclocking, as well as clean power delivery for the CPU. The power comes from a single 8-pin connector at the top of the motherboard. Down the side, you'll find dual USB 3.0 headers, as well as the 24-pin motherboard power connector. Connectivity Connectivity is pretty robust, with the usual ports all accounted for on the bottom row. There's also a good amount of fan headers and RGB lighting connectors located on the motherboard. One nice added feature is an onboard power and OC button; unfortunately, no BIOS LED though. Audio SABER Hi-Fi is built-in, with a powerful DAC and some gold capacitors on the right side of a motherboard separator trace. We've heard great things from Gigabyte's on-board audio in the past, so I'm confident this one is up to the job too. There are five full-size PCI-e slots on this motherboard, with two of them featuring Armor to ensure even the heaviest of graphics cards are securely mounted. Another nice feature is that shroud over the rear I/O, it's a small touch, but one that really tidies up the aesthetics of any motherboard. Plus it looks like we've got some RGB lighting built into it too. Around the back, you'll find a good amount of USB 3.0 ports, PS2, USB type-C, and the HD-Audio jacks. There's a single GbE LAN too, so that's all the basics taken care of. Around the back of the motherboard, everything looks pretty standard. However, the chipset and VRM heatsinks are mounted with screws, so you should be able to remove them if needed; could be handy for modders. Testing & Methodology Test Systems used for review and comparisons and in previous benchmarks: AM4 CPU – Ryzen R7 1800X Motherboard – Changes per review RAM – Crucial Ballistix 16GB (2x8GB) 2400MHz CPU Cooler – Noctua D15S with dual fans Graphics Card – Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Z270 Motherboard – Combination used to determine widespread performance RAM – Crucial Ballistix Elite 16GB (2x8GB) 2666MHz (16-17-17) CPU Cooler – Thermaltake Water 3.0 with Gelid GC-Extreme Graphics Card – Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit X99 Motherboard – ASUS ROG STRIX X99 GAMING RAM – 32GB Crucial Ballistix Sport (4x8GB) 2400MHz (16-16-16-39) CPU Cooler – Thermaltake Water 3.0 with Gelid GC-Extreme Graphics Card – Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Z170 Motherboard – ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ RAM – Crucial Ballistix Elite 16GB (2x8GB) 2666MHz (16-17-17) CPU Cooler – Thermaltake Water 3.0 with Gelid GC-Extreme Graphics Card – Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Z87 Motherboard – ASUS Maximus VII Ranger RAM – 16GB Crucial Ballistix Sport XT (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1866MHz (10-10-10-30) CPU Cooler – Thermaltake Water 3.0 with Gelid GC-Extreme Graphics Card – Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 980Ti Power Supply – BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 850 Watt Main Storage Drive – Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench Operating System – Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Games Used Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Rise of the Tomb Raider Test Software Cinebench – available here WPrime – available here SiSoft Sandra Engineer – available here 3DMark – available here AIDA64 Engineer – available here Passmark – available here CPUID HWMonitor – available here CPU-Z – available here Storage Testing Toshiba OCZ VX500 500GB SATA Toshiba OCZ RD400 512GB NVMe M.2 Patriot SuperSonic Magnum 256GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Test Procedure Memory For our memory tests, we use the built-in memory benchmarks in AIDA64 Engineer and SiSoft Sandra. For more details on each of the benchmarks please see here and here respectively. Storage To test the storage performance in our motherboard reviews we use AIDA’s Disk Benchmark utility built into their AIDA64 Engineer Edition software package and run linear read and write tests. We run each of the benchmark tests on a SATA III, USB 3.0 and M.2 device. For SATA III testing we use a SanDisk Extreme Pro 240GB, for USB 3.0 testing we use the Supersonic Magnum 256 GB USB 3.0 flash drive and for M.2 testing we use Plextor’s 256GB M.2 M6e SSD; the drives are always formatted before use. Networking For our networking tests we connect the test system up to our Intel Gigabit-enabled X99 motherboard test system through the ASUS RT-AC68U router. We opted for this over a direct point-to-point connection because we wanted to simulate real-world performance. For our WiFi tests, we do the same except we connect the test system to the ASUS RT-AC68U router via WiFi at a distance of 5 metres from the router. The testing is conducted using PassMark’s Advanced Network Test detailed below. PassMark The PassMark Advanced Network Test (which is part of PerformanceTest) is designed to test the data transfer rate between two computers both of which must be running PerformanceTest. One of the computers must act as the server and will sit waiting for a connection. The other computer acts as a client. It connects to the server machine and sends data to it for the duration of the test. You can download a trial version of PerformanceTest from here. Power Usage To measure power consumption we, use a “killawatt” meter and measure the total system power draw at the wall. We run three different use-case scenarios for 5 minutes and take the average reading. RightMark Audio Analyser (RMAA) RMAA suite is designed for testing quality of analogue and digital paths of any audio device. The results are obtained by playing and recording test signals passed through the tested audio path by means of frequency analysis algorithms. A more common mark is also provided for those unfamiliar with measured technical parameters. Available here. We run the RMAA test using a 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable connecting the line-out to the line-in to test the quality of the motherboard audio codec, not any external audio devices. Complete playback and recording test at default settings and then get RMAA to interpret the results giving the below outputs. Finally, we sync the playback and recording audio devices to the same setting as the test for accurate results. wPrime wPrime is a leading multithreaded benchmark for x86 processors that tests your processor performance by calculating square roots with a recursive call of Newton’s method for estimating functions. wPrime is a free utility that is available for download here. Cinebench R15 Cinebench is a widely respected benchmark for testing the performance of x86 CPUs. The program allows you to test single and multi-threaded performance as well as GPU performance by rendering with Open GL. Download here. 3D Mark The new 3DMark includes everything you need to benchmark your hardware. With three all new tests you can bench everything from smartphones and tablets to notebooks and home PCs, to the latest high-end, multi-GPU gaming desktops. Download here. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided We run the games internal benchmark with the ultra preset applied, AA turned off, V-sync off, and at a resolution of 1920 x 1080. Rise of the Tomb Raider We run the games internal benchmark with the very high preset applied, FXAA turned on, V-sync off, TrueHair off, and at a resolution of 1920 x 1080. Thank you Noctua, Crucial, ASUS, Gigabyte, Lian-Li, be quiet!, OCZ, for providing the hardware that helps makes these tests possible! CPU & GPU Performance Cinebench Straight away, the Gaming 3 is off to a fantastic start. At stock clocks, it's actually the fastest X299 board we've tested. Of course, you could argue who's buying a £1000 CPU and a £300 motherboard to run at stock. However, it looks like the BIOS and a few other settings are in good shape on this board right out of the box, and that's no bad thing. Once overclocked, the performance is still freaking awesome, but as you would expect, the more expensive Gaming 9 is able to maintain the higher clock speeds and performs better. WPrime Another fantastic result here, with the Gaming 3 and Gaming 9 putting out nearly identical scores. Overclocking does give the lead to the Gaming 9, although the Gaming 3 still gave a fantastic result too. SiSoft Sandra Almost identical scores for the AORUS boards again, showing that the Gaming 3 is pretty solid value for money in comparison. 3DMark Again the Gaming 3 is out in front at stock clocks. Overclocking does show some nice gains for the Gaming 3 here, but it's the Gaming 9 that once again takes the lead. Both boards are putting on a pretty solid performance in all these tests though. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided GPU throughput it clearly no issue, with the Gaming 3 scoring right where we would expect. A small 0.2 FPS gain when overclocked, but again, this is what we expected to see and is a good result. Rise of the Tomb Raider The Gaming 9 actually won a round in the stock tests here, but as you can see, the Gaming 3 is still blazing a trail at 125.26 FPS! Overclocking saw a very small gain here, but it's still one of the best performing motherboards we've tested here. Memory Performance AIDA64 Engineer Memory performance is right where we expected it to be, at least given the memory kit we're currently using, so no problems here. The latency test is a little high, but as we've stated before, this is more a trait of the many-core CPUs rather than the motherboards. SiSoft Sandra Combined Latency Test Latency is a little high, but that does often seem to be a by-product of the higher core count CPUs, but still a respectable score overall and what we expected. Storage Performance Linear Read Perfectly competitive scores here, with all storage devices running within their rated targets and no slowdown. Linear Write Networking Performance Passmark Performance Test 8 - Ethernet Again, we have competitive scores here, and low CPU load in both tests. Overall, networking isn't a problem for the Gaming 3. Passmark Performance Test 8 - CPU Work Load Audio Performance 16 Bit, 44KHz (DVD Quality) 16 Bit, 96KHz (Studio Quality) 24 Bit, 96KHz (Studio Quality) Power and Thermal Performance The Gaming 9 was quite power-hungry, but it has a lot more features and two CPU power connections. The Gaming 3 is a lot more reserved and sipped away on just 319w of power. Overclocking did increase the power consumption, but it's still one of the more efficient boards we've tested. 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."