GIGABYTE X870 Gaming X WIFI7 AMD AM5 LGA 1718 Motherboard, ATX, DDR5, 3X M.2, PCIe 5.0, USB4, WIFI7, 2.5GbE LAN, EZ-Latch, 5-Year Warranty

I recently upgraded my PC with a Gigabyte motherboard, and I couldn't be more satisfied. The installation process was straightforward, and the board's layout made cable management a breeze. The BIOS interface is user-friendly, allowing for seamless configuration and updates. Since the upgrade, my system runs cooler and more efficiently, handling intensive tasks without a hitch. Gigabyte has truly delivered a high-quality product that combines reliability with top-notch performance. Highly recommended for anyone looking to build or upgrade their system.

so far so good, haven't had any issues that i could attribute to the board itself. One thing i will note that isnt apparent when you buy this motherboard is that if you use all 3 ssd slots the speed of the bottom 2 will be cut in half due to the way the lanes are setup, that being said you are unlikely to notice this, I only noticed it because I reading the manual while traveling. But yeah, great board quality, it has a clean look, the performance is there and I really love the Bios design.

I watched a utube review which compared boot times from cold into Windows and for AM5, Gigabyte had the fastest boot times --- 25 seconds or so, versus up to a minute or more by competitors.Gigabyte also tunes your memory EXPO settings more aggressively than other companies resulting in higher performance in most benchmarks and games. It's not even 5%, but it's free.Temperatures for Gigabyte motherboards also tends to be lower than most other companies.Gigabyte was the first company to add extra copper between mb layers and the others now do it too.Cooling for NVME drives is aided by a huge 3"x 4" heatsink (or 2x3, I'm high) with room for 3 sticks. Thermal pads are stuck on already for you.It is a nice looking board that comes in ICE (white) if you want that style build, they do look great but are work to maintain dirt free!Does not include stand offs (should come with your case), or even screws (ditto) just a couple cables for SATA drives, WIFI 7 antenna, and some other stuff I forget.If you buy a case that still separates the leads for front panel power. led, hdd led, and reset into tiny little itsy bitsy little hard to handle little pieces of plastic instead of one 5x2 rectangle (as all mb's use the same configuration by now), you will be happy to know that this Gaming X includes a plastic socket that you can plug in the leads FIRST and then just plug that to the left side of the front panel socket.That piece of plastic alone should be enough to distinguish this mb from the competition as really, they are pretty much all the same in terms of actual performance that price should be a driving force in your decision. You can save maybe $40-50 getting a cheaper model without losing any performance such as you'd notice, except some features like USB 4 and and wifi 7, but you can spend hundreds more and see even less improvement.

As someone who doesn't read much into RAM configurations and didn't read the manual at first like many others that have purchased this motherboard; if you are using two sticks of RAM you must make sure you put them (staggered) in the two slots further away from the motherboard, otherwise you will not be able to boot your machine due to RAM light being on. If you are using four sticks, there will not be any issue.Your mileage will vary with how spacious the board itself is depending on what components you are planning to install, in my opinion it is VERY tight.I installed a AMD 9800X3D with a 120mm Noctua heatsink with a single tower and single fan configuration (this is not even a very large CPU cooler it is probably about average). I have extreme doubts that a double tower Noctua heatsink (or perhaps any double tower) with two fans would be able to fit in this motherboard due to how close the RAM is to the CPU socket. As a word of caution just make sure that your CPU cooler of choice will not make contact with your RAM, chances are someone has already done a video of a build with your exact components so just make sure to do your research.In addition to the Noctua CPU cooler, I also installed a Radeon 7900XTX (which is admittedly a very large card). I also have gripes with how close the CPU socket is to the PCIE slot that you will be installing your graphics card into. There is very little space between my CPU cooler and the top of my GPU, making it extremely difficult to reach the latch for unlatching and removing my GPU, again your mileage will vary; do the research.The parts I installed that had a very close and tight fit:Corsair Vengeance 2x 16GB RAMAMD 9800X3D processor w/ Noctua NH-U12S chromax cooler/heatsinkRadeon 7900XTX graphics cardI implore you to take the time and look up similar builds to what you are trying to do to make sure that your components will fit snugly into this board! It works great but can be tight for larger parts (Double tower heatsinks, 4080+, 5080+, 7900XTX, 9070XT etc...).

My experience was mostly positive. It was easy to install. No issues with CPU or GPU compatibility. The onboard wifi is twice as fast as my old PCI-e Wifi 6 when connected to the same 5Ghz network. Using this motherboard for 2 months, it's been rock solid.The bad: CFosSpeed. It's a "network traffic shaping" driver that's part of the driver suite with Gigabyte Control Center. I was having latency issues and inconsistent download speeds. Took me a while to pin down CFosSpeed as the culprit. After I uninstalled it, my network issues disappeared.Other observations: Only the primary m2 SSD slot has a heat sink and spiffy EZ-Latch attachment mechanism. The other 2 m2 slots are open-air with screw-holes to hold down the drives. Pretty old-school.Also, there are only 2 additional full length PCI-e slots other than the main slot for the GPU. Testing my old wifi card meant plugging a tiny x1 PCIe card into a full length x16 slot. I would have preferred if they provided one more x1 slot.