Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5 (LGA 1150) Motherboard Review

Ryan Martin / 10 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

Gigabyte’s Z97MX-Gaming 5 motherboard costs $129.99 at Newegg and $129.99 at Amazon. In the UK it can be found for £113.26 on Amazon, £119.99 on Overclockers UK and £111.56 on Scan. This product is offered with a three year manufacturer warranty. Pricing and warranty details are accurate as of the time of writing.

Overview

As it stands the Z97 market doesn’t have much in the way of mATX competition. Many of the mATX motherboards offered by rival brands at a similar price point lack certain features that this board has: e.g. the MSI Z97M Gaming lacks SATA Express or the ASUS Z97M-PLUS lacks SATA Express and offers less flexible PCIe connectivity. Gigabyte’s Z97MX-Gaming 5 does a good job of offering a more comprehensive assortment of features at a compelling price point making it a sensible choice and a good all-rounder. From our benchmarks it has been clear that this is not the highest end motherboard available, many other (more expensive) motherboards have better performance in certain areas. However, we have to note that for the size and the price point the performance is certainly as good as I would expect and it offers more than enough performance for anyone looking to build on the Z97 platform. A lot of the things I had to say about the Z97X-Gaming 7 Gigabyte motherboard also apply to this motherboard since it is effectively the same but just a bit smaller, Gigabyte have kept a lot of their design principals consistent across the entire G1 Gaming series. The Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5 offers a good balance of performance, features, size and price. Gigabyte’s successes last year with enthusiast Z87 motherboards, especially here in the UK, are likely to continue with quality motherboards like this one.

Pros

Competitive pricing
M.2 and SATA Express
Dual BIOS chips and systems
3 year warranty
Audio gain switches
Killer NIC

Cons

Brown PCB
Loosely secured motherboard heatsinks
High CPU usage on Killer NIC

Neutral

Audio quality seems a little low for the codec used but is still relatively excellent

“Gigabyte’s Z97MX-Gaming 5 stands out in the market with its feature packed design and excellent pricing. As far as micro-ATX motherboards on the Z97 platform go this motherboard has to be a strong contender for anyone looking to build a compact rig.”