Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 Review
Category : Z370
Published by Luca Rocchi on 23.01.18
With the AORUS Gaming 3, Gigabyte has a well equipped mid-range motherboard in its portfolio, which comes with a bunch of interesting features. There are for example two M.2 Gen 3 x4 slots as well as a good looking design. Apart from that this model should feature a rather interesting price.
Already at launch Gigabyte had a complete portfolio of Z370 motherboards. With the Z370 AORUS Gaming 3, the company offers a budget gaming motherboard suitable for building an affordable gaming PC. Altough this is not going to be an expensive board, there are quite a few features which you can find also on higher-end models. From a design point of view there is a black and red color scheme.
Specs and Delivery
| Chipset | Intel Z370 |
| Memory | Dual Channel DDR4, 4 x DIMM, Max. 64 GB DDR4, 4000 OC, Non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory |
| Multi-GPU |
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| Slots |
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| Audio | Realtek ALC1220
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| Storage | Intel Z370 chipset
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| Network |
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| Internal Connectors |
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| Extrenal Connectors |
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| Forfactor | ATX (30.5cm x 24.4cm) |
| BIOS | 1 x 64Mb flash ROM, UEFI AMI BIOS |
Features
High Definition Audio Design |
High Definition Audio Design is Gigabytes interpretation of good onboard audio. In this case there is a Realtek ALC1220 codec, which has been combined with high-quality capacitors. |
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PCIe Armor |
There are two full size PCIe slots on this particular board and they have been equipped with a steel frame. If you put a large and heavy gaming graphics card in a case, you will notice, that over time the slots starts to bend by a little bit. Furthermore, during rough transporting it can happen, that the PCIe slot breaks by the sheer force. In both cases the steel armor should help increasing protection of the PCIe slots. |  |
M.2 Support |
The Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 motherboard from Gigabyte features two M.2 slots which are placed between the PCIe slots. This motherboard can be equipped with one 2280 M.2 and one 22110 M.2 SSDs, where the figures behind the "22" stand for the actual length of the M.2 SSD in millimeter. Both slots are connected via four PCIe x4 lanes, offering up to 32 Gbps bandwidth. |  |
USB 3.1 Front-Panel Connector |
Right next the 24-pin connector there is a USB 3.1 front-panel connector, which has been wired using two PCIe Gen 3 lanes and therefore offering up to 16GB/s bandwidth. Unlike several other Z370 models, Gigabyte on the Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 uses a 3142 ASMedia chip for the USB 3.1 connector. Should you own or plan on buying a case with such a connector, then you'll be able to use it combination with this motherboard. |
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Layout
As we've already mentioned in the introduction the Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 motherboard comes with a great looking design. The PCB has a matte black finish and the heatsinks feature red accents. Apart from that the PCH received RGB backlight. The heatsinks have been shaped nicely and the whole product is really good looking. The layout has been well thought and there are plenty of useful features, like two headers to attach external USB 3.0 ports, six SATA 6Gbps ports (two straight) and two M.2 Gen 3 x4 slots. In addtion there is a plastic cover on the I/O ports.
The Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 comes with a digital 7 phase power design regarding the CPU. The CPU power design, which is controlled by an Intersil ISL95866 dual-loop multi-phase controller. Furthermore there are NTMFS4C06N and NTMFS4C09N MOSFETs from ON Semiconductor on the high- and low- side.
This board has been equipped with a total of four DIMM-slots. Officially supported is everything up to DDR4 4000 (O.C.). There is engough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you wont encounter compatibility problems with big coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders. Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 2.0.
The PCH as well as the current converters are being held at adequate temperatures via passive heatsinks. The heatsink for the current converters are made from two aluminium blocks which are not linked with additional heatpipe. While the heatsink on the PCH has been secured with screws, the two small heatsinks used on the current converters sport a push-pin system. The PCH heatsinks are all quite simple and flat. The cooling blocks have been very well made and also they are perfectly attached to the board to provide enough pressure on the components they have to cool.
Connectors and I/O
In total, Gigabyte equipped the Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 motherboard with six SATA 6Gbps connectors, which have all been natively wired to the PCH and two of them are straight and not angled. Above the first PCIe x16 slot there is the first M.2 slot and on top of the second full size PCIe slot, there is the second M.2 x4 Gen3 slot. With this motherboard you get one PCIe x16 Gen 3.0, one PCIe x4 Gen 3.0 and four PCIe x1 Gen 3.0 slots. The full-length slots are reinforced and run in an x16/x4 configuration allowing AMD CrossFire but not SLI as NVIDIA requires an x8 speed on the slot. Unfortunately there are no practical onboard power- and reset-buttons on this board but at least there are few diagnostic LEDs that can help in the case of a failure.
There is a total of five fan headers on the Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 which is enough, to provide a well equipped ATX system with fresh air. The headers have been located close to the CPU as well as spread over the board. Other than that it's a good thing that all of them feature four pins, which allows for rpm regulation in BIOS as well as under Windows. Furthermore there is a plethora of additional headers you find listed below:
Lighting
- 2 x digital LED strip power select jumpers
- 2 x RGB (RGBW) LED strip headers
- 2 x digital LED strip headers
Fan headers
- 1 x CPU fan header (4-pin PWM)
- 2 x system fan headers (4-pin PWM)
Watercooling connectors
- 1 x water cooling CPU fan header (4-pin PWM)
- 1 x system fan/water cooling pump header (4-pin PWM)
Additional connectors
- 1 x USB 3.1 front panel connector
Connectors
- 1 x PS/2 keyboard/mouse port
- 1 x OCSW button
- 1 x HDMI port
- 1 x USB Type-C port, with USB 3.1 Gen 2 support
- 1 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A port (red)
- 4 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports
- 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
- 1 x RJ-45 port
- 6 x audio jacks
BIOS
The most recent version of Gigabyte’s UEFI BIOS presents itself with an attractive design, and you can not only monitor system information, CPU and motherboard temperature, CPU voltage and DRAM status but you can also create your own fan profiles for the different PWM headers. Other than that Gigabyte has been working on the overclocking options, meaning they've added memory profiles to this motherboard. This helps making memory overclocking quite a bit easier.
Test setup
Hardware |
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| Motherboard |
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| Processor | Intel Core i7-8700K @ 3.7 GHz |
| Memory | 16 GB (4x4) Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3000 CL15-15-15-36 2T |
| Graphic card | ASUS GeForce GTX 980 |
| Driver | GeForce Game Ready Driver 385.69 |
| Hard disk |
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| Power supply | Seasonic X-650 |
| OS | Windows 10 x64 Updated |
Preview / Gallery
| Product Picture | Link to Gallery |
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ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero |
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ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming |
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Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 |
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MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC |
3DMark
Tipe Spy - CPU Test
3DMark is a benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation to determine the 3D rendering performance of GPU and CPU. In this article we only use the Physix workload testing routing to find out how capable a processor is. The score is measured in points where higher is better.
Cinebench R15
Cinebench is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer's 3D rendering capabilities. The test scenario uses all of your system's processing power to render a photorealistic 3D scene (from the viral "No Keyframes" animation by AixSponza). This scene makes use of various algorithms to stress all available processor cores.
SiSoft Sandra 1
SiSoft Sandra is a theoretical multi purpose benchmark suite which is able to show differences in CPU architectures. Therefore on this page you'll find Arithmetic-, Multimedia- and Cryptography-benchmarks.
SiSoft Sandra 2
UC Bench
SuperPi 1M
Right Mark Audio Analyzer
Crystal Disk Mark 5
Power Consumption
Performance Rating
Price Comparison
| Model |
Geizhals.eu |
| ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero | |
| ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming | |
| Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 | |
| MSI Z370 Gaming Pro Carbon AC |
Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| It's quite obvious that the Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 is a product where the vendor is aiming for an attractive price point. This motherboard features a great looking design, which has been kept in black and red. Apart from that there are features like two M.2 slots, several 4-pin PWM header and a decent audio solution. The Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 is currently listed on Geizhals for 133 Euro, which is perfectly reasonable considering the feature list. | -
Design - Layout - Features - 2 x M.2 x4 Slot |
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| Layout | + | - | |
| The layout of the Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 has been well thought. This model features four angled SATA connectors and two straight SATA ports, which can be found in the bottom right corner. Since the Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 is a mid-range motherboard, it's no surprise that there aren't any power- and/or reset-buttons. Apart from that we like the placement of the full-sized PCI-Express slots and they are equipped with metal reinforcement plates. There is a total of two full sized PCI Express slots and four PCIe x1 slots. In addition there are two M.2 slots. | - Space around the CPU
socket
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- No power/reset-button onboard | |
| Performance | + | - | |
At the moment our test setup includes four motherboards but during the next weeks we will add more models. Calculating the average of all benchmarks results we ran, we see that this board scores 3rd. If we check a bit closer, we see that the Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 is about 2,8% slower than the ROG STRIX Z370-I Gaming in 3D Mark benchmarks. Furthermore, speaking about 2D performance, we see a good result for the Gigabyte motherboard in RightMark Audio Analyzer. On another note, we had at energy efficiency where this board scores 1st. The only flaw that we have seen regards the VRM temperature. Since Gigabyte is using a push-pin system on the heatsinks, the temperature ramps up quite easily with the CPU overclocked and some heavy load. |
- 2D Performance |
- VRM temperature | |
| Overclocking / BIOS | + | - | |
| Gigabyte has put a lot of time and effort into making their BIOS look nicer and more user friendly. Especially when we compare this version of Gigabyte BIOS to the first UEFI BIOS from Gigabyte, it simply cannot be compared, since the two are worlds apart. What's almost self-explanatory is that you get a lot of tuning and tweaking options in order to optimize the system towards your needs. We also like the entry screen which displays a lot of useful information. Apart from that overclocking our test CPU to 5 GHz was straight forward and there were no issues whatsoever. | - Sheer amount of
options |
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| Recommendation | + | - | |
| The Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 is a well equipped Z370 motherboard. At the moment this board isn't so quick according to our 2D and 3D benchmarks. We expect a better BIOS from Gigabyte that can improve the overall performance of this motherboard. On top of that it comes with a decent feature set and a price of 133 Euro excluding shipping costs, which makes it definitely affordable. | - Price | ||
| Rating | |||
| We give the Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming 3 excellent 4 out of 5 stars. | |||
