Gigabyte X99M-Gaming 5 Review

Performance Analysis

At stock speed, the X99M-Gaming 5 fared very well with top three results in the PCMark 8 video encoding and image editing tests and also in Cinebench, while also posting some impressively low power consumption numbers too. Interestingly, all three micro-ATX X99 motherboards sat at the bottom of the stock speed gaming graphics, perhaps showing that all other things being equal, there is a small amount of throttling going on with the primary GPU due to its close proximity to the second in our test system.


The overclock helped to boost the results considerably from stock speed although as we previously mentioned, when under heavy load for long periods such as Terragen 3, the CPU would eventually throttle as it breached the Tj Max. Here, despite having one of the best overclocks, it posted the slowest result, but for shorter periods of load, such as Cinebench R15, it actually posted the fastest result on test so it's a bit of a shame there wasn't the option to push the Tj Max up a little. That said, we wouldn't recommend using these settings every day so this is more of a formality than a major issue.


The storage results equaled the best we've seen so whether you're opting for an M.2 SSD or something like a Samsung 850 Pro, the X99M-Gaming 5 lacks nothing compared to the competition. The audio results were good, if not spectacular and while the X99M-Gaming 5 was better than the likes of MSI's X99S SLI Plus, the ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer is the better board for onboard audio overall.

Conclusion

Despite a few niggles, we're really impressed with the X99M-Gaming 5. It's superb value, has nearly everything you could want from an X99 board and it doesn't take too many risks with the aesthetics either. The EFI needs some work and it's more suited to water-cooled or single GPU setups but it's the perfect partner for a micro-ATX X99 system.

In many ways it's a better offering than either of the other micro-ATX X99 boards we've tested too. It has better cooling than both, dual M.2 ports and SATA Express plus a 1x PCI-E slot while the onboard audio is respectable too. The ASRock Fatal1ty X99M Killer is perhaps its closest rival, and it offers better audio a slightly better EFI and dual LAN ports but there's otherwise very little between them.