GIGABYTE AORUS GA-AX370-Gaming K5 (AMD Ryzen AM4/ X370/ RGB FUSION/ SMART FAN 5/ HDMI/ M.2/ USB 3.1 Type-C/ ATX/ DDR4/ Motherboard)

I ordered this board back in July of last year to build my new machine, an AMD Ryzen 1800X. The build is a major leap in speed and performance from my old AMD FX-8370 4 GHz PC that I also bought here on Amazon in 2016 (I wrote a review on that CPU that year). I installed a G.Skill 32 GB (2 x 16GB) on this Aorus board and a Corsair Hydro Series H100i v2 liquid CPU cooler. I installed this board in a Corsair Carbide Series Air 740 cube case, which I highly recommend for its huge space and exceptional quality. And for storage, I bought two Samsung 1 TB EVO SSDs and brought in two hard drives (a 1 TB drive and a 3 TB drive) from my old PC and two external hard drives from Samsung (a 5 TB and a 1 TB) for backup purposes.BIOS FIRMWAREIf you're planning to buy this board for your Ryzen build, make sure you install the latest BIOS firmware from Gigabyte. Otherwise, you will get a two alphanumeric-character error, which is shown on the onboard display in red. I forgot what was shown on mine, but it wasn't found in the manual among the list of error codes. So, download the latest BIOS firmware, install it and you're good to go.You might be able to boot to Windows or the operating system of your choice without updating the BIOS firmware, but you will soon find out that your system crashes from time to time. I installed Windows 10 on mine and it frequently crashed before I decided to install the latest BIOS firmware from Gigabyte.HDMI PORTNotice the HDMI port on the back. It doesn't work unless your CPU has built-in GPU (graphics board). I plugged an HDMI monitor on mine and wondered why there was no video signal. The manual doesn't mention anything that a video-enabled CPU is needed for this port to work, or perhaps it did but I missed that part? Anyways, I only found out after reading some forums on the Internet.ETHERNET CARDSI use this PC for 3D modeling, animation and games and software developments. And on this board are two graphics cards -- a GTX Titan X and a GTX 1080 for graphics rendering. Both cards work flawlessly. However, it's possible that some Ethernet wireless cards will not work on this board.I have a Trendnet TEW-807ECH card that cannot be detected by Windows 10 even after installing the latest driver that supports the OS. I tried reseating the card on the slot and moving it to another PCIE slot to no avail. I also (temporarily) installed Windows 8.1 on the second SSD of my new computer (dual boot setup), booted on that system and installed the latest driver for the card. To my surprise, the TEW-870ECH card was also not detected. This card was working fine on the AMD FX-8370 computer with the 970A-UD3 motherboard (also from Gigabyte) running Windows 8.1.My initial thought was that the new motherboard was defective, but that was immediately proven wrong after I installed my older wireless Ethernet card. I don't know what brand this is as there are no names on the circuits except for some numbers, and I didn't keep its box. The card, however, works with the motherboard.DUAL BIOSThe Dual BIOS feature is what I like the most from the Gigabyte boards. If your BIOS gets corrupted for some reason (ex: due to viruses, or you mess around with your BIOS settings and now it won't POST), you can activate the backup BIOS with its default factory settings, and it will overwrite the primary BIOS firmware.AMD4 CPU COOLER BRACKETIf you also buy the Corsair Hydro Series H100i v2 liquid CPU cooler, you need to have the AM4 bracket that's compatible with this board. The two ones that came with the H100i v2 in the box aren't (one's for Intel board, but the other one isn't for AM4 boards). You can buy the AM4 bracket directly from the Corsairs website or even here on Amazon. But at the time of purchase, they ran out of AM4 brackets for the cooler. If you happen to be in that situation, buy the NZXT AM4 bracket model RKA4-RL-KRX62-02. It's the same bracket under a different name, so it fits perfectly with H100i v2.Overall, I'm happy with this motherboard. It comes with all the drivers and software for overclocking and for changing the fan speed and the colors of the onboard lights (among others).*************************************************************************UPDATE 02.16.2018: INSTALLING A THIRD GRAPHICS CARD*************************************************************************I now added a third graphics card to this board -- another Nvidia GTX Titan X, which I plugged on the bottom PCIe slot where the card extended over the front panel (FP) connections. I removed the G connector that I used for the FP connections because it got in the way.(The G connector is that small block that comes with the motherboard where you connect the wiring from your power and reset buttons and the hard drive LED light. You then plug this block to the front panel connection). But even without the G connector, the graphics card is still touching those FP connections, so be careful you don't damage those and make sure that you lock the card in place.ISSUE - WINDOWS WON'T STARTThen came the moment of truth. I powered on the computer. It got into POST and then the Windows loading animation. Then the PC rebooted and got into POST again, but instead of seeing the Windows loading animation, I got a "Preparing Automatic Repair" message and then a "Diagnosing PC." Then I was presented with the option to restore the system or cancel. I chose "Restore," but it still didn't fix the problem.To cut the story short, I removed my old wireless Ethernet card and that did it. It is now working. To connect to the Internet, I am now using an ASUS wireless Ethernet dongle (USB-AC51 Dual Band AC6000).Also, I noticed when I got into Windows 10 for the first time after installing the new card, it took a few minutes for Windows to recognize the card. To test that the graphics cards are working, I connected a monitor to each of them and all three showed my desktop. Also, the CUDA settings in my OctaneRender showed the two Titan X and a GTX 1080. So, I'm very happy about it.

Good board. Reached stable 4.15GHz on 1.5v CPU core on R1800X (all 8 cores enabled) - toned it down to 4GHz for daily use at 1.38v because 1.5 is way high (even on high end water cooling). The K7 comes with a bus clock frequency changer (BCLK) for fine tuning of the OC. DDR4 running at 3.2GHz (Corsair LPX Vengeance DDR4 3200 kit at C16) - no problem. Check compatible memory kits from Gigabyte's site. Running F3 BIOS - came with F2.PROS:Good design, plenty of room around CPU for large block cooler (I use AIO but plenty of clearance around the CPU). Generally easy to use and setup - good location of various headers and headers are labelled on the board. BIOS code display on the motherboard helpful as are the 4 LEDs on the board that tell you if your power/CPU/memory/BIOS is ok (helped me out there because it told me my CPU wasn't working right initially - wasn't seated completely properly. Worked like a champ after that. Read XMP profile immediately even if this is an AMD board. So are the power and reset buttons on the board.Things I wish it did better:- Wish for more BIOS memory options to tweak memory ratio with BLCK > 100MHz to keep the memory at the correct speed. Still working on that as it wasn't evident to me at all how to do that in that BIOS.- Didn't come with the latest BIOS in the box (F2) and refused to install new (F3) BIOS from the files from a USB stick: q-flash failed with "disk not found error" - ??? - it's a USB stick and in my view, if the board sees the USB stick and can boot and install windows from it, you'd think Q-flash would be able to recognize the stick and update the BIOS from it without having to install a full OS. BIOS update worked fine once windows was installed.- Gigabyte has all these utilities to measure and tweak board settings instead of having just one. The windows based OC tuning utility crashes almost instantly in Windows 1703 "Creator Update".- Case header (power, led, etc,) rather flimsy compared to other boards I've had (you need to insert the case headers in it rather than plug them into the part, then plug the part into the motherboard. Makes things hard depending on the connectors you get in your case.Other observation is that the memory list on the Gigabyte site is strange to me: Example, some of the supported Corsair module part numbers are for Corsair 32Gb or 64Gb kits but Gigabyte only uses two modules in those kits - not the whole kit. In my case for DDR4 3200, the list showed for total of 16Gb (two 8Gb module), the part number listed is for the 32Gb kit (four modules). Not sure why. The support list should really pay attention to the kit size and not break kits up as that will just confuse buyers.