Gigabyte X299 Aorus Gaming 3 Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Gigabyte X299 Gaming 3: Packaging and Bundle3. Gigabyte X299 Gaming 3: Board Layout and Features4. Gigabyte X299 UEFI5. Gigabyte X299 Software6. Testing Methodology7. Tests: CPU Related8. Tests: Memory Related9. Tests: Gaming Related10. Overclocking & Power Consumption11. Tests: Motherboard Features Performance12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

ATTO Disk Benchmark

The ATTO disk benchmark is a Windows-based utility for testing storage performance of any storage drive or controller. We use the default benchmark setup.

M.2 PCIe Performance

For M.2 testing we use a Samsung 960 Pro 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD.

Gigabyte's Gaming 3 has no problems taking our 512GB Samsung 960 Pro to its top speed. The short ATTO benchmark run saw the drive creeping past 60°C when sat in the slot below a high-powered GPU. The open slot, just below the CPU socket, was cooler but still not particularly impressive.

The lack of M.2 cooling via a small heatsink is disappointing as ASUS' solution on competing motherboards can help to wipe up to 10°C off the Samsung 960 Pro temperature, in our testing.

USB 3.0 5Gbps & USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps Performance

We test USB 3.0 5Gbps and USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps performance using a pair of Corsair Force LE 120GB SSDs in RAID 0 connected to an Icy Box RD2253-U31 2-bay USB 3.1 enclosure powered by an ASMedia ASM1352R controller.

Despite using the same ASMedia-based USB 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps solution, the Gigabyte board could not keep pace with ASUS' higher-cost offering. It looks like USB 3.1 performance is currently suffering due to early platform issues.

USB 3.0 5Gbps performance is right where it should be, which is unsurprising given the use of X299-based connections.

SATA 6Gbps Performance

For SATA 6Gbps testing we use a SK Hynix SE3010 960GB SSD.

SATA 6Gbps performance is on par.

Audio

Rightmark Audio Analyser is a freeware benchmarking utility designed to objectively test the performance characteristics of audio solutions. We setup a line-in line-out loop and execute the record/playback test before generating the results report you see below. A sampling mode of 24-bit, 192 kHz was tested.

RMAA rates Gigabyte's Realtek ALC1220-based audio solution as ‘Very Good‘ but most of the results scored ‘Excellent‘.

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