GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 & G1.Sniper 3 Motherboard Reviews

GIGABYTE Intel Z77 G1 Sniper M3 mATX Motherboard

The front of the retail packaging for the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 is quite similar to the G1.Sniper3 that we just looked at. Some of the technologies listed are different between the two board, so what is listed on the front is different. Both are part of the GIGABYTE G1-Killer series of gaming motherboards so the styling of the retail boxes are similar.

The back of the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 breaks down some of the features of the board and gives us a general layout of the G1.Sniper M3.

Once again we have a nice heavy duty camouflage packaging within the out shell.

Unlike the G1.Sniper3 the bundle isn’t stored within a separate box. Here it is laid out on top of a layer of cardboard that protects the G1.Sniper M3 during shipping.

Once we remove the bundle and protective layer of cardboard, we can see that the G1.Sniper M3 is wrapped inside a anti-static bag to protect from ESD and is nice and secure inside the packaging.

The bundle that accompanies the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 is nowhere near as full as the one with the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper3, though it has everything that you will need to set up your system.

The GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 Intel Z77 motherboard features the same black and green color combination that we saw on the G1.Sniper3 as well as the previous G1-Killer motherboards that we have looked at in the past.

Although the G1.Sniper M3 is a smaller form factor than the G1.Sniper3 that we looked at on the previous page, GIGABYTE didn’t cut any corners. The G1.Sniper M3 supports the same quantity of memory with a maximum of 32GB of system memory. The supported speeds are slightly lower than on the Sniper3 with the Sniper M3 supporting only 2400MHz memory. At the bottom left corner of the DIMM slots we can see the internal header for the SuperSpeed USB 3.0. This is a great spot for the internal SS USB 3.0 header, it would be nice and easy to hide the cable to the front panel along the same path as the main motherboard power.

Initially I had some concerns about the SATA capabilities of the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3. There is a total of only five SATA ports on the board, which can easily be filled quickly depending on your configuration. After giving it some thought though, if you are building a small form factor PC you aren’t as likely to be running massive quantities of hard drives and optical drives. If you need more than five SATA ports you can always look at a board like the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper3 or a SATA expansion card. Along the edge of the G1.Sniper M3 we can see the header for the front panel, a pair of internal USB 2.0 headers, and a couple of 4pin system fan headers.

Continuing down the edge of the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 we can see the T.P.M. (Trusted Platform Module) header, and the front panel audio. Along the leading edge of the GGIABYTE G1.Sniper M3 we can see the same type of area sectioned off for the Creative Sound Blaster Audio with a Creative CA0132 chip. Being a smaller form factor than the G1.Sniper3, the expansion capabilities of the G1.Sniper M3 aren’t as great. The GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 is only capable of running 2way NVIDIA SLI or AMD CrossFireX in the two outer PCIe x16 slots. Each of the outer PCIe x16 slots are PCIe Gen 3.0 capable when paired with PCIe Gen 3 cards and CPU. The center PCIe x16 slot is only capable of running at x4 speeds. The PCIe x1 slot and PCIe x16 (PCIe x4) are only PCIe Gen 2 capable.

The only two real differences on the back panel of the GIGABYTE G1.Sniper M3 and the G1.Sniper3. The first is the number of SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports. All of the ports on the Sniper M3 are SuperSpeed USB 3.0, the Sniper M3 only has two SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports while the remaining four USB ports are USB 2.0. The second difference is the G1.Sniper M3 only has a single RJ45 LAN jack. The Sniper M3 uses an Intel Gigabit Ethernet controller, while the Sniper3 features an Intel controller as well as the Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2200 LAN chip.