Gigabyte G1.Sniper 5 (Z87) Motherboard Review

I’m not a gamer, so I want to make that clear from the offset, and it’s not by choice, but instead is due to the hours I work and the fact of having a family who I spend every bit of spare time with. Even with that in mind, I’m still loving this board, and I still believe that it appeals to me, though I won’t benefit from some of its gaming features, and there are plenty of reasons why I say that.

The first is that it’s made by Gigabyte, and they have been making some amazing products recently, not just with motherboards, but this board does confirm that to the max. The second is the colour scheme which I’m a real sucker for, and matching it up with the newest GTX 770 or GTX 780’s in SLI will see you at the top of your game while brandishing a sexy little system at that, so be sure to get some neon green fans and you’re good to go. The third is that the performance is strong. While it may not have been top on every test, it did show some stellar performance on multiple tests, though a little bit disappointing on others; namely the gaming related benchmarks, but with an improved updated BIOS, we may see this change in the future.

I’m honestly glad to see that Gigabyte have picked up their game when it comes to styling and ditched the bullets and other gimmicky traits that they started the G1-Killer series with. Instead, they have gone for subtle, yet radical with the green colour scheme, and the fact that the EMI shield around the audio lights up really is the icing on the cake. Speaking of the audio, a lot of it comes as a subjective issue as everyone has different listening tastes and each will hear slightly different tones, and therefore no real-world way of testing audio can be put down onto paper so you will just have to trust me on this one. All I simply need to say about the audio is that there is a very distinct change over your bog-standard solution, with sound clearer, punchier and cleaner.

The Z87 chipset on this board has been harnessed to its full potential with SATA 6Gb/s and USB 3.0 being plastered over the board by the bucket load, you will not end up having any issues trying to connect your storage devices or peripherals and getting the very best performance out of them at the same time.

Sadly we have no concrete wording on price at this particular time of writing, and that’s because we know that Gigabyte want to offer the consumer the very best value across their whole range, so all we can say for now, is that it will be more expensive than most boards, but based on its feature set, such as the improved audio, the ability for quad SLI and the fact that we managed to overclock to 4.9GHz with ease, we can honestly say that whatever price it comes out out, it should be pretty strong when it comes to value for money.

Pros

• Colour scheme is unique
• Packed full of accessories
• Fantastic overclocking potential
• Amazing overclocked performance
• Twin BIOS
• 4-way SLI capabilities
• Excellent durable components

Cons

• High but justified pricing
• Stock performance wasn’t at its peak

eTeknix Says: If you are wanting to move up to a Z87 motherboard and get a taste of Haswell without skimping on anything, the G1.Sniper 5 is definitely for you with a feature set that is hard to beat and colour scheme that will certainly stand out, the board appeals to everyone. Watercooling option and extreme overclockability is high on its profile list and for extreme gamers wanting 4-way SLI action, the Sniper 5 won’t disappoint. An all-rounder that may be aimed at gamers but will see other markets wanting a slice of the action.

Thanks to Gigabyte for providing this review sample.