Gigabyte Z270N-Gaming 5 Motherboard Review

1. Introduction2. Gigabyte Z270N-Gaming 5: Packaging and Bundle3. Gigabyte Z270N-Gaming 5: Board Layout and Features4. Gigabyte Z270N-Gaming 5: UEFI5. Gigabyte Z270N-Gaming 5: Software6. Testing Methodology7. Tests: CPU Related8. Tests: Memory Related9. Tests: Gaming Related10. Overclocking & Power Consumption11. Tests: Motherboard Features Performance12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

Gigabyte is just as guilty as other motherboard vendors when it comes to overwhelming users with optional software utilities. However, to its credit, Gigabyte's App Center solution is the most elegant of them all because you can install and uninstall every utility in nothing more than a few clicks.

Once everything has installed, the App Center dashboard is the only software you need to have a shortcut for since it will launch any of Gigabyte's utilities including the overclocking EasyTune program, System Information Viewer which has the fan controls or RGB Fusion which controls the RGB lighting.

Gigabyte EasyTune is the go-to software for on-the-fly performance tuning and automated overclocking.

RGB Fusion is Gigabyte’s LED software that will let you individually manipulate each onboard RGB LED or connected LED strip. There are two tabs, basic and advanced, which hold different levels of detail and options. The advanced tab will allow you to control each zone independently of the other zones while in the basic tab changes of colour and lighting pattern will be automatically applied to all controllable LEDs.

For some reason we couldn't control our RGB-ready Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming from within this software, which is disappointing. Despite that, the overall range of colours, lighting patterns and level of intuitiveness make Gigabyte's RGB software one of the strongest.

System Information Viewer (SIV) is the last of the significant software utilities since you can auto-tune your fans and set custom fan profiles from within this utility. It’s a tad easier to use and is better visually presented than the Smart Fan 5 controls within the UEFI. It is quite easy to create custom fan profiles and the level of control offered is very powerful – this software is worth installing for the fan controls alone.

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