Gigabyte G1.Sniper 5 Motherboard Preview

Next up on our line-up of previews for the latest Intel based motherboards we find ourselves with another Gigabyte board in our presence.  You may have already seen some of the other Gigabyte previews that we’ve done in the past week including the Gigabyte G1.Sniper M5 which is the Micro-ATX version of what we have today; its big brother, the G1.Sniper 5.

The G1.Sniper 5 is part of the G1-Killer series of boards and is one of the top-end boards from Gigabyte with a full ATX form factor and a bundle load of features packed into it, so today gives us the chance to show our readers exactly what this top-spec board is all about. The only issue that we have is that we are of course bound by Intel’s NDA which is coming up very soon, and therefore we can’t mention anything to do with Intel or their new chipset or 4th generation CPU processors so please bare with us for the upcoming review of this board where we will be unleashing the benchmarks and performance results as well as showing how far this bad boy can go in terms of overclockability.

The G1.Sniper 5, just like its little brother incorporates the famous G1-Killer green and black colour scheme that it’s been made famous for. A black PCB is at the heart of this board with green accented components including the DIMM slots, PCI-Express lanes and of course the thermal heatsinks which also add some unique features that we’ve not seen on this range of boards before.

One thing you will notice is that the heatsink around the CPU socket has barbs for connecting watercooling loops to as well as an active fan solution to help keep the Phases nice and cool, especially when overclocking and pushing your hardware and mainly processor to the limits.

Covering the new Intel chipset (which for the moment will remain nameless) we find a low-profile G1-Killer heatsink with G1 series branding. The heatsink is powered allowing it to light up around the skull and its low-profile design causes no obstruction to longer PCI-Express expansion cards.

In typical fashion for our previews, we have a detailed video checking out the aesthetic design of the board as well as looking at the Gigabyte features, while not giving anything away in terms of Intel technology and features and of course we aren’t allowed to mention anything in terms of benchmarks and performance results, at least not for now.

 [youtube]http://youtu.be/Tf6qyQJ8G7A[/youtube]

If you’ve read my preview on the G1.Sniper M5, you’ll see that I’m a big fan of the colour scheme and design on the G1-Killer range of boards and have been since their introduction a couple of years ago and they have developed them in conjunction with what their consumer audience have told them and improved the overall design and features and this shows with the G1.Sniper 5 with its subtle branding and funky green colour scheme and with a feature set that is jam packed, you certainly won’t be disappointed.

Feature wise, we see some great potential for SLI and CrossFireX functionality which will see gamers smiling, as this board is aimed at them primarily with improved audio and LAN giving true gamers all of the special addons they need to be at the top of their game.

The bottom line is that anyone would be satisfied with this board, especially if they dabble in games or if they are a pro gaming player, and with the ability to watercool the CPU socket heatsinks with the addition of an active cooling solution with thanks to the fan, even overclockers will receive great results from this board too. For those wanting to watercool, the included barbs are going to add extra functionality and if you are clever and approach a company willing to match the green, you will have one amazing looking system at the end of the day.