Gigabyte G1 Sniper A88X Gaming Motherboard Review

G1 motherboards follow a distinct green and black color scheme.  The military undertones have been removed and replaced with ornate metalized logos.  The PCB features a matte black finish and the 2oz copper traces making it extremely sturdy.  Green accent colors highlight the primary expansion slots and onboard heatsinks.

The back of the board is devoid of surface components assuming you don't count the large AMD reinforcement plate for the heatsink.  We like showing the back of these motherboards since it helps decipher what is going on in terms of the PCI Express slots and chip placement.  We'll talk more about these in the Multi GPU Index section of this review.

Even for a gaming motherboard it is important to have excellent power delivery under load and reduce power when the system is at idle.  The Sniper A88X features a conservative 6 phase VRM design and only a single mosfet cooler.  Under normal we suspect the four phases along the left are active with the remaining two only being active under peak loads.  

Behind the PWM cooler you'll find the 8 pin CPU power connector.  The connector is easily accessible with plenty of room to remove the plug as needed.

Dual channel memory comes standard on the AMD APU and the Sniper A88X supports DDR3 modules up to 2133Mhz (OC) with a maximum of 64GB usable.  This is more than twice the supported memory of most Ivy and Haswell based motherboards.

24pin ATX power is located in the traditional location near the upper edge of the motherboard and out of the primary airflow.