Conclusion
To be honest, I never expected to like this motherboard all that much. Anyone who knows me or has read my reviews have probably picked up on the fact that I’m an admitted hardware snob. That’s not to say I only like expensive stuff, but I definitely sometimes shy away from the cheaper hardware most of the time. Motherboards are something I genuinely believe is worth spending some money on. It’s the core of your system and determines the feature set available to your system to a large extent. That said, there are certainly cases where less is more or buying something more expensive isn’t going to make a difference.
For example, if you run a 3950X on a quality X470 motherboard and another on a $650 MSI MEG X570 GODLIKE, you wouldn’t see much if any difference in most performance metrics. That said, it’s possible you’ll see slightly different boost behavior, but the difference, if there was one isn’t likely to justify the $500 price increase to go with the GODLIKE over something like the GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X. That said, you do miss out on additional network controllers, better audio, and greater expansion capabilities.
But what if you don’t need all that? The good news is, the GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X cuts corners, but it cuts them in all the right places. You don’t have a paper thin, wavy PCB that looks like cooked bacon with the stability of raw bacon. You do get a reasonably good VRM implementation with a decent number of phases. It isn’t an overbuilt and utterly ridiculous implementation like you’ll see on GIGABYTE’s highest end offerings.
Overclocking
However, you can run a 3900X or even a 3950X on ths board. I will say that this motherboard did seem to do much worse on automatic overclocking. That is, PB2+AutoOC or PBO+AutoOC did less than usual here. We generally go right for the manual overclocking as it stresses the system harder. That said, boost clocks sometimes seemed a bit lower here and it showed in some of the benchmark tests.
Given the motherboard was the variable here, I have to conclude that it was the GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X that held the CPU back, but only by the tiniest margin. For all I know, this was due to the firmware more than by design. In any case, the performance was close enough to the other test systems that I doubt most people would give it much thought.
Even if that is the case, we know the VRM is capable as it can handle a full 4.3GHz overclock on a 3900X. Therefore, the rest comes down to potential firmware issues or manual tuning to get more out of this board. I think it can certainly be done as the board is good enough to do it.
Operating Temperatures
Just looking at the VRM’s, the temperatures weren’t all that unreasonable. Temps taken at the heat sink show a result of around 109F to 119F. Software-based measurements from Aida64 showed VRM temperatures of 123F or roughly 51c. That’s not bad for a budget board. It’s fairly good considering the heat sinks are large but rather basic. We don’t have active cooling or a heat pipe embedded in them.
The chipset was another story. It reports a temperature of 58c and still never engages the fan. In fact, I’ve never heard any X570 motherboard engage its chipset fan outside of initial power on. It’s clear this chipset can handle the heat and AMD didn’t want the fan to become overly annoying. They obviously felt a chipset fan gave them peace of mind in certain conditions. If you’re concerned about the noise of active cooling, don’t worry. It probably won’t engage in most scenarios.
Value
Obviously, at $150 or so, the GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X represents an incredible value. GIGABYTE picked the right methods for cost reduction as far as I’m concerned. There are a few options that are slightly cheaper, but I can’t speak for those other than to say, some of the corners they cut aren’t things I necessarily agree with. Given the performance and overclocking, the GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X is fantastic for the money. It’s well built, stable and it just worked. The feature set isn’t amazing, but it’s competent in the bracket.
Unfortunately, given X570’s premium position, this is almost as cheap as it gets and this is just about the cheapest motherboard GIGABYTE makes using the chipset. You can get one that’s about $10 cheaper which drops the RGB LED’s.
Final Points
Back when X570 came out, I knew why it had increased in price by so much compared to X470 offerings. To say that sub-$200 X570 motherboards seemed scary is a bit of an understatement. The GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X proved me wrong. While it’s not very fancy and there aren’t any frills to speak of, the motherboard’s got it where it counts. It’s solidly made, robust and very capable. It is currently $159.99 at Amazon.
The GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X does a good job of bridging the gap between X570 and X470. I think it represents a solid option for anyone not wanting to crack the $200 price point on a motherboard regardless of the Ryzen 3000 series CPU you choose to pair with it. If you’re in the market for a socket AM4 motherboard, the GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X is a good option for people looking for a basic option that won’t break the bank.
The GIGABYTE X570 Gaming X earns our silver award for being generally well made, stable, decent at overclocking and an overall solid value for the money.