I have Gaming 5 and do not recommend it at all.
My CPU is Ryzen 7 1700 with stock (LED )cooler and RAM is 2 x Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400 ( it is on QVL list) and GPU is RX 460 4GB. It is connected to 850 watt Thermaltake PSU and housed in a Zalman Z12 Plus case. My SSD's + HDD's are connected through a 4-bay IcyDock 2.5" hot-swap HDD cage which I installed on a 5.25 drive bay on my case. Theoretically, I should not have any reason to open the side panel of the case ever again.
Theroretically the Ryzen 7 1700 is supported with BIOS F3 ( original BIOS the motherboard came with), now I am running on latest BIOS F5 ( Agesa 1.0.0.4.a )
The problem is this damn thing freezes and gets stuck on an undocumented BIOS POST code on every startup. Does it freeze on Windows ? No. This damn thing freezes on logo screen or when you enter BIOS. You enter BIOS, click on a few arrow keys to move around it and baaamm... it freezes. When it freezes, it stays so, restarting does not help, shutting down and restarting does not help etc. I shut it down, wait for 5 minutes, then it starts to boot.
It has lots of fancy features for sure. The On/Off button, CMOS clear button, OC button, restart button located at the top right and 7 segment POST LED display in bottom left are very helpful if you build assemble your motherboard by placing the CPU and RAM AND IF YOU POWER IT UP BEFORE YOU INSTALL IT ON YOUR CASE. After you install it on your case and close the side panels, they are useless.
I had read Ryzen had issues and deduced that I needed a CMOS Clear button to cope with frequent BIOS issues. But a Clear CMOS button is useless unless you can use it without opening your case, and some Asus motherboards do have them located on the back panel of motherboard - but god, they are expensive.
I had two alternatives to choose from : MSI Gaming Carbon Pro or this one. I selected this one for the presence of Clear CMOS key only. And it turned out to be useless.
Another thing I constantly experience is the motherboard freezes and displays a POST message "b4 : USB device hot plug-in" . Did you understand what the problem is? I did not either.
Not only are the BIOS POST code definitions are cryptic and useless, the LED's are not readable at all. Some error codes displayed on motherboards bottom left corner is not even documented even like the one I hve given above. And after two weeks, I still can not figure out what the displayed code is, from my chair I incline a bit down and can see some lights which are obstructed by the GPU ! So I push the case a bit to the right, incline a bit more downwards, and there I see something unrecognizable. Why ? Because instead of a LCD display, there is a regular POST LED installed. So I see something, I try to deduce what it looks like ( the POST documentation in manual lists them as "B4" but what I can see is something like this: https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS... I am not even sure about the orientation of the code; I just know that I am looking at it from top. Does it display b4 or something like Ah? God knows.
*** Removed two sentences related how angry I get at that point and on which frequency I get this angry based on feedback from moderation team. I have left this so that future readers might have a feeling how frustrated I get ***
The main m.2 socket - where you will put your precious, highly expensive NVMe drive is located exactly under your GPU slot, you can not see the slot at all let alone change it without removing the GPU. You might not see this in even in this reviews pictures unless you look for it, or heck even if you have the board in your hands you might not visualize this. It is not easy to imagine how it will look like with the GPU installed. Well, almost all GPU's starting with RX 460 and GTX 1050 are dual socket GPUs - meaning they not only cover their own slot, but also the slot below them too. Which happens to be the exact place where main m.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe drive is supposed to go in.
NVMe drives tend to get very hot, and those idiots decided to put them just beneath another very hot component. So, I did not risk my NVMe drive at all; I will need to order some third party passive m.2 cooler before doing that. In times like this *** removed four words again based on feedback from moderation team ***
This point applies to all motherboards - Intel and AMD alike : There are lots of ports, but as it happens, a port being there and having a working, compatible device to go in that port, and putting the device into that port and making all connections.. does not mean it will work. Somehow, things like PCIe lanes come into play.
"The only nitpick with X370 is that it has only eight PCIe lanes of its own. Coupled with the 24 PCIe lanes of Ryzen—16 for graphics, four for NVMe, and four to communicate with the chipset—users have 32 lanes to work with. "
For example, if you put a PCIex4 device in a specific x16 port, all three PCIe x1 ports become unavailable. If you connect a SATA m.2 drive into main m.2 slot, SATA3_3 port ( there are 8 ports, 0 to 7 ) becomes unavailable. If you manage to get a U.2 NVMe drive and connect it to its U.2 port, the main m.2 port becomes unavailable and so on. Lots of limitations are exist.
Now, I love this motherboards features :
- You might not care about LED lighting ( I certainly hated the idea ), but if you have a case with a glass side panel or with a mesh top, you will start caring. LED lighting is much more likeable than I imagined.
But, beware - you can set different areas of motherboard in different colors - but you can not set CPU cooler LED color. Somehow, it is set automatically based on god knows what. For example, as shipped motherbaord had LED colors set to red, and CPU cooler LED color was dark green - why, god knows. Since my case was shipped with two case fans with blue LED's, it was a mess. I set all motherboard LED's to blue as well; now the CPU cooler LED color is a very faint orange. Why, god knows.
*** Update : this time a useful one, really. The problem was twofold : I have Ryzen 7 1700 that comes with Wraith Spire cooler and that I had inserted the LED cable to the CPU LED socket without taking orientation into consideration.
Based on some other posts on this question, I recognized that there is a correct orientation to insert that cable into that slot and this is actually documented in the motherboard manual. With correct orientation and STATIC preset, the CPU LED appears in the same color as all other motherboard LED' - and there is no way to select CPU color using RGB Fusion from BIOS or Windows. and as you might have guessed, I wanted to set cooler LED to a different color - to red actually, which would look good. Just as I am writing this, I thought why I would like Red Cooler LED on a blue LED background, and recognized that the "on/off" button on the motherboard has a beautiful red lighting and unconciously I was influenced by it. Some youtube videos appear to show that Asrock RGB LEd might have the ability to set a different color to CPU cooler, but I can not be sure.
If I had Wraith Max cooler, supposedly I could download a windows application that would allow me to set cooler LED to another color. If you happen to have a Wraith Max cooler, you can check AMD website, probably it is related to the second cable that is attached to motherboard. ***
Also to note: RGB Fusion can be set both from BIOS and Windows. If you set it in Windows using Gigabyte App, then your settings become active only after Windows boots - in my case green CPU LED, red mobo LED's and blue case fan LED's are active until Windows boots up and all LED's turn to blue and CPU LED turns to faint orange . If you set it on BIOS however, your settings are applied the moment PC is booted up, all LED's are blue and CPU LED is faint orange. Though even then, if different colors are set up on BIOS and Windows, Windows takes over after it starts.
- There are 8 SATA ports, and they are very important to me. If I ever get my hands on a U.2 drive, I can try it as well. So, good for me. MSI Carbon had only 6.
- It is beautiful to look at.
Sh*t... I recongized that the only reason I have to keep this board is that I can not give it back.
I wish I had purchased MSI X370 Gaming Carbon Pro. Sure, it would have its problems and I would need to short some pins to clear CMOS ( Gaming 5 has one of these pins too ) but at least its main m.2 location was not exactly beneath the GPU slot.
To sum up: unless you need this as a test bed like I do, stay away from it. If you need it as a test bed, well you will be treated like a tester and every boot will be a "test case" and you will want to ...
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