I don't like testing boards that don't work as you'd expect. The Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming G1 is one of those boards. There are a few things that really bother me, as mentioned in the cons above. These are things top-level board should not have as problems. A $200 board, fine. Yet when you spend $500 on a motherboard (or $620, as the price locally would dictate), you expect everything to work, and work right. The upside of these problems? They can all be fixed with updates.

When I first began testing the Gigabyte Z170X-Gaming G1, memory support was atrocious. None of my kits with speeds higher than 2666 MHz would work. My standard kit of 3000 MHz C15 G.Skill sticks I use with every board would boot and run some benchmarks, but stability was fleeting. I asked Gigabyte for a BIOS update, and they sent me the same BIOS back, and with that, I nearly posted this review as the first review of a horrible product ending with a recommendation to never buy it. Then, about 10 days later, Gigabyte got back to me with a new BIOS, and even the 3600 MHz Ripjaws V kit I reviewed a short time ago ran perfectly. All stability issues were gone, no matter what kit I installed, including a couple that have yet to be reviewed. The manual BIOS CPU voltage settings need some tuning still, though.

All of that said, the audio is really good. 3D positioning is great, and the ability to change OP-AMPs is something the musician in me loves for sure. The large number of SATA Express ports and the dual M.2 ports that come with a U.2 adapter ready for you to use ensure you have all the high-speed drive connectivity you need, as does the USB 3.1 Bay box. The esthetics, along with the LEDs that light up the board all over and the ability to change the LED color, are absolutely fantastic. There is much to like about this board. If Gigabyte could solve the issues I still have with the product, which they can if they so choose, the board would be very close to a 10 out of 10. If they fix the issues and drop the price to $399 or $429, it most definitely would be a 10 out of 10. At $500, I wouldn't give it a 10 out of 10, but a 9.9, for sure. It's still a good board, and its issues are somewhat minor for sure, but there ARE problems that require fixing in my books, but what I like and what you like may be very different. Just bought one? Let me know what you think in the forums!