Gigabyte G1 Killer Sniper 3 Gaming Motherboard Review

The G1 Sniper 3 is one of handful of motherboards aimed at satisfying the needs of overclocking, gaming and hardware enthusiasts at the same time.  While this group may be small by comparison the things they look for in a motherboard can be rather specific and sometimes downright crazy.

Motherboard layout is rather straight forward and doesn't deviate much from what we have seen with the X79 UD3 and X79 UD7 motherboards.  The Gigabyte G1 Sniper 3 will support up to four graphics cards but is clearly designed to accommodate 3-way video card setups as the primary configuration.  4-way SLI and Crossfire is possible assuming your chassis comes with extra expansion slots or are running on a test bench.  A 5-node (1 in and 4 out) PLX PCI Express switch located in the traditional North Bridge location and is what makes 4-way SLI possible.

Cooling is handled by four black anodized heatsinks connected in succession by a black chrome heatpipe.  This heatpipe helps to move excess heat around the system so that the heatsinks getting adequate cooling can dissipate the thermal loads.  We found that all of the heatsinks were getting quite warm under normal usage and using a single 120mm fan blowing across the PWM helped keep things cool to the touch.

Overclocking the Sniper 3 was really easy and only required a few minor changes to reach the 4.5Ghz clock target.  Our processor has been known to run 5.5Ghz under the Single Stage Phase Cooler and 5Ghz using a self contained watercooler so our speed choice wasn't to purposely scale things back but rather to show the results of a realistic overclock you may expect under 24/7 operation.  The results of our overclocking adventure were quite promising and showed what can be done when the CPU gets more time to process data and less time worrying about distant sounds and making sure packets are being sent efficiently.

Onboard Creative Audio
Onboard Killer NIC
Totally sweet color scheme
Full ATX motherboard
Quad SLI Support
Voltage test points
Thicker and Stronger PCB
Matte Black Finish

Onboard power required to activate PCI Express slots
Heatsinks could benefit from active cooling