Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by the intel core i7 4770k unlocked processor if you're a speed freak added until 3500 series SSD to your Haswell system for a truly enthusiast class experience welcome to a much demanded unboxing this is from gigabytes g1 killer series of boards this is the g1 sniper 5 gaming motherboard now a lot of people ask me what what the heck is a gaming motherboard I think gigabyte had it mostly right with the original g1 series board so that was the assassin the sniper and the gorilla but there were a few things that they got wrong at the time it was a very strange platform to have a premium gaming Board on LGA 1366 when there was a more updated platform on a different socket and also they were extremely expensive gigabyte has adjusted pricing down somewhat compared to the original assassin but keep kept the premium features coming so they've actually been improved over those older boards even though the sniper 5 is not as expensive as the assassin was that isn't to say that this is an inexpensive motherboard because my friends it is not it is extremely expensive let's go ahead and run through the accessories like look at this box of accessories is unbelievable four-way SLI bridge 3-way SLI bridge 2-way SLI bridge no crossfire bridge that's ok that should come with your your motherboard USB cable 4d I believe this is for the Bluetooth guy bluetooth and Wi-Fi sorry crossfire bridge there you go nice black one matches your board next up we've got antenna for Wireless next up we've got ha front three and a half inch USB 3 bay device who ought that pop grid kit I'll show you this later ok a nice sexy black IO shield 1 2 3 6 SATA 3 connectors cables not connectors a manual another more different guidebook a manual for the wireless and finally a gigabyte sticker yes one of the most complete accessory kits ever and what I like about gigabytes Wireless implementation is it's just PCI Express they don't use some proprietary module so if you happen to buy yourself a sniper five and you don't want Wireless on your gaming motherboard that has super advanced onboard wired networking you grab this thing you throw it in another machine like your media center PC and boom you've got Bluetooth and wireless on that machine instead I think it's a great value add and more manufacturers should move towards non proprietary accessories with their boards as opposed to stuff that you can only use only with this board and owned only this board okay anyway so moving right along we've got black solid caps rated at 10,000 hours at 105 degrees which is unlikely to happen in your computer please don't let your computer run at 105 degrees a gold-plated CPU socket this is one of the few scenarios where gold plating would actually matter because what's good about gold plating is that it's malleable meaning that it will last for more insertions and removals which is one of the problems with these LGA sockets they're not actually rated for very many of them it has a two times copper BCB so this is part of their ultra durable five concept they're glass fabric PCB that makes it more resistant to humidity as well as all ir digital power phases so those are under there and unfortunately you can't really see them but you'll have to trust me they're really good and particularly on my gigabyte board so i use an x 79 up5 on my personal system no coil line whatsoever which is definitely thumbs up other physical saw that i consider that i consider this a durable feature but i don't think that's actually how they brand it but some somewhere on here there are two physical there they are two physical UEFI BIOS chips meaning that you can switch between them there's actually an LED indicator so you can see which one you're using and I want to move right along to the cooling solutions so this is one of the things they were really talking about a lot at Computex it uses I would consider this a three option cooling solution so it can be either completely passive there you go see you can see the heat pipe that connects it all the way down to the Southbridge area here or you can run an active fan to cool it gigabyte claims that silence I call bollocks on that because all these little tiny fans have irritating wine that drives me absolutely crazy so I would leave that off or you can use the integrated liquid cooling for maximum cooling you use 3/8 inch barbs and while I would have preferred a G 1/4 socket like a soos is implemented on the Maximus 6 formula the key difference between this and the Maximus 6 formulas is actually available right from the launch of as well and well there that this is actually available right now although that will be coming soon I would have preferred that but I use 3/8 inch tubes anyway so it wouldn't bother me personally that much but if you prefer 1/2 inch or quarter inch or you want to use nice angled compressions then you're pretty much out of luck on this one it also has 9 integrated fan connectors of which 7 of them are fully controllable and one of them is kind of special so there's the CPU fan connector right up here as well as the CPU optional one this is optimized for things like hooking up a secondary pump that you want to run at a hundred percent all the time or some large heat sinks that actually have dual fans on them you can plug that in and that's sort of an auxiliary CPU fan header other than that we've got a couple more here only three pins unfortunately I'd like to see more manufacturers moving towards entirely 4 pin PWM fan header designs you've got one two three four along the bottom really like to see this because particularly with a lot of cases that have basements whether it's car drive cooling fans or radiators or whatever else down there it's nice to have the option to plug everything into the bottom of the board as well and then there's one here at the back which is again nice to see so they've really put a lot of thought into where those fan headers are as opposed to just you know putting them all up here as if we're all running front five and a quarter bay mounted fans like who does that nobody does that anyway moving right along gaming oriented features so it supports four-way crossfire and four-way SLI which means that using plx chips and PCI Express Lanes bitters and all that stuff you're achieving at least PCIe 8 X 2.0 per slot when you install four cards however it should be noted that those splitters don't magically add more bandwidth to the platform and they can actually introduce latency so I don't necessarily like the implementation but Nvidia limits SLI compatible slots to ones that operate at 8 or more for their reported speed so in order to get four-way SLI working that's what gigabyte had to do and to make it sort of as gaming balls to the walls as they could they wanted four-way crossfire and four-way SLI support you've also got three additional PCIe 1x slots other gaming features this right here actually will move into audio later so this right here dual and implementation so they've got a an Intel Nick as well as a Bigfoot Network so remember that is a Qualcomm solution now Bigfoot networks a 2200 meaning that you've got on the fly packet prioritization for your gaming traffic as well as a couple of other neat software implementation features that I really like for example you could limit the bandwidth available project to a particular application so when I used to upload YouTube videos on my home connection that wasn't as strong it would just kill the internet connections of everyone else in the house because it was completely saturating it then within it with a Bigfoot Nick I could actually limit it to no only upload at this speed so everyone else was able to use the Internet as well so that's something that I really like to see and remember guys the SATA ports are color-coordinated so the six black ones are going to be off the Intel chipset and those four gray ones are off of the Marvel chipset in terms of other connectors on the board that are notable we've got onboard power and reset connectors as well as on board v checkpoints and a post indicator LED a 24 pin power connector I personally consider extremely Andy as well as onboard USB 3 you can tell from the red background that that supports their on/off charge feature which allows you to charge even high current draw android or iOS devices even while the computer is off you've got auxiliary power I recommend using this if you're running three graphics cards or more you've also got your front panel connectors an additional front USB 3 connector although this one does not support on/off charge as well as 2 USB 2 front panel connectors and front audio which leads us to audio so this right here this little strip actually illuminates green when the board is powered on and represents a physical segregation between the rest of the board and the part of the PCB that handles audio this is the first time we've seen this feature and it kind of smacks of a bit of uh while they were doing it so we were doing it sort of thing especially with the LED illumination but it's a good feature and I'm glad to see it implemented on more boards gigabyte has taken their sort of their awesome onboard audio concept that they first introduced with the g1 series and they've really upped the ante so check this out they're using a sound Core 3d quad core processor for the sound processor how meaningful is it that it's quad core not at all but what you do get is you get creatives software suite and you have Hardware accelerating it so it couldn't be that bad even if quad core doesn't necessarily mean anything you've also got audio grade capacitors here and check that out swappable op-amp on a motherboard so that's what this little kit here was for it actually includes a chip puller as well as a second op-amp so you can try out which one you like more what op-amps do is they change the signature of the sound they change the sort of I don't want to say quality but they do change the quality subjective quality of the sound so you can not only try out the two that come with your board but you can swap in pretty much whatever you want and really change the way that the sound operates they've also got an amplifier that is capable of powering up to 600 ohm headphones however if you're running headphones like that you shouldn't be using onboard audio even if it's fantastic onboard audio and all of the audio connectors look at those those are sexy are gold-plated which may actually matter for these connectors because you want to make sure you have a nice solid connection it is an analogue connector particularly for digital connections like USB it totally doesn't matter but this it might actually help especially if you unplug and plug things in repeatedly and as far as convenience features go they have their automated overclocking as well as their Q flash utility that makes BIOS flashes a breeze and I think I've covered the other things that I wanted to say about that let's move right along to onboard i/o here we go so two USB 2.0 ports a ps2 keyboard mouse combo port I still like to see these coaxial digital audio out as well as optical digital audio out six USB 3.0 ports dual hdmi displayport and 7.1 audio out the power connectors including the eight pin up here as well as the 24 pin over on the right-hand edge are in their optimal locations and it should be noted this is a slightly wider board than normal so it's an e ATX board but not a fully te ATX board so it only uses the standard ATX mounting holes thank you for checking out this unboxing don't forget to subscribe Lyons tech tips from unboxings reviews and other computer videos and leave a comment let me know what you think guys we just spend $400 on a motherboard at this point or would you buy a cheaper board maybe one hundred and fifty dollar board gigabyte have some great hundred and fifty dollar boards throw a high end sound card in it throw a high end NIC card in it and call that a day which do you actually think is a better option