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It is Gigabyte's turn to show what their roughly £100 B350 offering can deliver. The AB350-Gaming 3 is built around AMD's value-orientated B350 chipset but with sprinkles of quality from Gigabyte, such as 10Gbps USB 3.1 Gen 2, Realtek ALC1220 audio, and strong RGB LED capability.
The Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 looks to switch the focus in comparison to B350 competitors at this price point. Instead of focussing on maintaining a particularly strong power delivery solution and ample VRM cooling, Gigabyte instead invests in faster USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports, a better audio solution, and more SATA ports. Offered alongside those hardware features are Gigabyte's crown jewel software features – RGB Fusion and Smart Fan 5.
With a recent price drop from £116.99 to £104.99, the Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 is placed to compete against the ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming K4 and MSI B350 Tomahawk, both of which we have reviewed recently. Does Gigabyte's offering have the correct mixture of features and performance to prove itself as a worthy option?
| Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 | |
| Form Factor | Narrow-ATX, 30.5 cm x 23.0 cm |
| CPU Socket | AMD AM4, 4+3 phase VRM |
| Chipset | AMD B350 |
| Memory | DDR4 Dual channel, 4 DIMMs, up to 64GB, up to 3200MHz with OC (with a Ryzen CPU) |
| Onboard Graphics | DVI-D and HDMI ports for use with AM4 APUs |
| Expansion Slots | 1x PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 for Ryzen, wired to the CPU) 1x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 mode, wired to the chipset) 1x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x1 mode, wired to the chipset) 2x PCIe 2.0 x1 (wired to the chipset) |
| Storage | 4x SATA 6Gbps (via B350 chipset) 2x SATA 6Gbps (via AM4 CPU) 1x M.2 SATA 6Gbps or NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 (with Ryzen CPUs) or PCIe 3.0 x2 (with AM4 APUs) |
| USB | 5x USB 2.0 (4 Internal, 1 Rear via B350) 6x USB 3.0 (2 Internal via B350, 4 Rear via AM4 CPU) 2x USB 3.1 Gen 2 (2 Rear via B350) |
| Networking | 1x Realtek RTL8111GR Gigabit LAN |
| Audio | Realtek ALC1220-based 7.1 channel HD audio |
| Fan Headers | 5, all support 3/4pin fans (2x CPU, 3x CHA) |
| RGB Headers | 2, 1x 4-pin RGB & 1x 5-pin RGBW |
| Rear I/O | 1x PS/2 mouse & keyboard combo port 1x USB 2.0 port 1x HDMI 1x DVI-D 4x USB 3.0 Type-A 2x USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-A 1x LAN (RJ45) port 5x OFC audio jacks 1x Optical SPDIF |
| UEFI BIOS |
AMI UEFI with DualBIOS redundancy |
Thank You for the review very well done and lots of useful information here. I have to build systems for my customer a lot and reviews like this are really helpful for me. If I was to choose between these three boards I would not have a problem using any of them in a build I put my store name on. But if it came right down to it I probably would choose the Gigabyte board just because with those extra features it puts more boxes to check off on the spec sheet.
Luke, I love that your reviews go into details on fabrication. It’s info I’ve not found anywhere else. The AB350-Gaming 3 features everything I’m after. I don’t need multiple graphics cards or support for more storage, but I’d be willing to pay a little more for a slight step up which doesn’t compromise on power and thermal considerations. Without Kitguru reviews of all the boards, I’m not sure where to look. Does the AX370-Gaming K3 fit the bill? What about the MSI B350 Gaming Pro Carbon? Any guidance would be much appreciated.
How is the on board DVI and HDMI Display enabled on the AB350 MoBo? I’ve installed a older ASUS GTX 650 Graphics card and I can only pull up displays that are connected to it.. I tried removing the GTX… and used the onboard DVI and HDMI… nothing!!
these don’t have onboard graphics so those port on the mboard are useless you need a separate graphics card.
I have heard they was put their because these boards will be supported upto 2020 so newer cpu could offer that function not sure if this is true we will see
Yea! Thanks Mon Berg!! After a lot of wasted time I realize that! Deceptive advertising.. You have to look at the fine print (*) I now need to buy another graphics card to run 3 displays… 3 contiguous displays.. Does this sound like a proposition?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MG0733A/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_5?ie=UTF8&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&th=1