I figured I should write this review from scratch because I've had a very up and down experience with the product since I bought it in 2017. Firstly I want to say that the physical product is pretty well built. I have been running windows 10 on it since day one and to be honest AMD was more at fault for odd behavior than Gigabyte in the first 6 months at least. The constant AGESA updates seem to have made it pretty difficult for motherboard manufacturers to keep up. Gigabyte in particular takes about 2 months between stable releases and sometimes three months. This has only impacted me in an extremely negative way once. I was using a RAID 0 array on BIOS f22b (beta) and had windows 10 1709. This build of windows 10 was particularly terrible for gaming as just watching media while gaming would cause lag and frame drops. I've got a GTX 1070 Overclocket to about 2000MHz and +600MHz on the ram. I troubleshot for weeks and just threw in the towel. When gaming I just played videos on my laptop. Anyway when Windows 10 1803 came out I upgraded right away because I was hoping it would fix the stuttering issue.
The issue is that EXACT bios revision and AGESA version caused Windows 10 1803 to BSOD after the upgrade. I went through having to do a clean install and it still didn't work. I had been using f22b because it provided the best OC I had been able to get. 3.975GHz on the CPU and 3400MHz on the ram stable. I had to upgrade to BIOS f23 to get everything to boot up and lost 200MHz on the ram. The system also runs hotter on this revision but the AGESA code is current 1.0.0.4 so It's worth it in the end.
As for the motherboard it is very picky as to which PCI-e slot I use for my Wi-Fi card so I always put it in the bottom (could also be an issue with the wifi card Rosewill RNX-1900) It works perfectly in that slot though. When it it is the top x1 slot it disconnects some times so I just routed Extra USB 3 connectors there instead then moved it to the bottom x4 slot. This way I can still utilize the x8 for SLI or crossfire in the future.
Performance is good when you're on a stable (for you) bios revision. I'd say the weakest and most frustrating part of owning this board is the BIOS revisions. I am the type to keep everything up to date, but with this board if you find a good BIOS for you just do yourself a favor and keep using it until you MUST update it. For instance if you had a problem like I did where you can't boot into a new build of windows. Also with Gigabyte a lot of the time their beta bios's are better than the final revisions so make sure you save them if you like them because they often pull the betas from the download list when the final version is released.
The board works well with my G.SKILL Trident Z cl16 3600MHz ram though different BIOS and AGESA versions have it perform at different levels. The best I have ever got stable was 3466mhz and that is dependant on the BIOS, AGESA, and IMC in your CPU. This board pairs quite well with a lot of ram which is nice.
The VRM cooling isn't great and if you push too much voltage on your CPU and RAM it will get toasty! It shoudn't go over 90c even when you're pushing a ton of voltage but if you have a very small fan laying around that you can put over the VRM heat sinks you will lower your temps about 5c (the x470 version of this board fixed this issue with a nice finned heat sink. It's just too bad you can't replace the one on the x370 with it.)
Overall though I've had issues here and there with this board it really has a fantastic set of features for the money and as long as you test your OC with OCCT and your ram with memtest. It will run VERY well especially on BIOS F23. It is the latest version and is finally quite good.
Ryzen gen 1 was a rough launch but gen 2 seems to have been quite smooth and as an early adopter I knew what I was getting into. To be honest a year later I am still glad I got a Ryzen 1700 and I had the segmentation fault too. AMD replaced my CPU in about 1.5 weeks and the replacement has been excellent.
If you can afford the newer X470 Gaming 7 go for it as it is basically this board with all the newer bells and whistles plus it has Wi-Fi included which is a nice addition. Oh and the better VRM cooler is great too.
The front panel audio is wonky for a lot of users, but I don't use it as I have a nice DAC/Headphone amp. The rear audio IO works perfectly and I use it in 7.1 all the time. The headphone AMP is actually a bit too strong IMHO. Paired with Sennheiser HD6xxs it pushes them too hard (at least it used to) I haven't used that feature since I bought the nice DAC/AMP combo unit from Amazon.
Current setup that works in this build:
R7 1700 @3.975GHz
16 GB - G.Skill Tridrnt-z RGB 3600 MHz Samsung b-die
Gigabyte GTX 1070 G1 Gaming rev 1.0
2x Samsung 1TB HDDs in Raid 0
2x Mushkin 1TB Reactor SSDs in RAID 0 (HIGHLY DO NOT RECOMMEND THEY ARE CAUSING MAJOR ISSUES ON TWO DIFFERENT AM4 MOTHERBOARDS IN RAID) HIGH FAILURE RATE!! (go with Samsung, Crucial, Intel, Micron, Kingston, SanDisk etc...instead)They have grewat customer service but horrid reliability. Two died (one in a year, and one exactly 30 days after purchasing it from Amazon so now I can't return it (-_-)
Rosewill RNX-1900 AC Wi-Fi
Fractal Design Celsius s36 AIO cooler Push/Pull config
CoolerMaster Master Case 5 pro
KINGWIN Lazer LZ-850 850W Modular 80 PLUS BRONZE PSU
| Memory Speed | 2133 MHz |
|---|---|
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
