When AMD’s Ryzen processors launched many people thought the X370 chipset was the way to go. It definitely offers the most features and the motherboards in that range are pretty awesome, but one should not look over the B350 chipset. If you are building a new Ryzen-based PC and are using a single graphics card a B350 motherboard could help you save some money to put towards that graphics card or other components. B350 motherboards could actually be the sweet spot for Ryzen gamers as you still get overclocking capabilities, two more PCIe lanes as well as 1 more USB 3.1 port than the lower-end A320 motherboards. The B350 board we are checking out today is the Gigabyte AB350-Gaming 3 which features a sleek design, a single M.2 NVMe slot, USB 3.1 supoort, multi-zone RGB lighting and more! Let’s jump in and see what this board is all about!
Special thanks to Gigabyte for providing us with the AB350-Gaming 3 Motherboard to review.
Features
- Supports AMD Ryzen™ & 7th Generation A-series / Athlon™ Processors
- Dual Channel Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR4, 4 DIMMs
- Fast 2 USB 3.1 Gen 2 with USB Type-A
- 2-Way CrossFire™ Multi-Graphics Support with Ultra Durable™ Metal Shielding over PCIe Slots
- Ultra-Fast PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 with PCIe NVMe & SATA mode support
- ALC1220 120dB SNR HD Audio with Smart Headphone Amp
- Realtek® Gigabit LAN with cFosSpeed Internet Accelerator Software
- USB DAC-UP 2 & 2 Front USB 3.0 Ports with Adjustable Voltage
- RGB FUSION with Multi-Zone LED Light Show design
- Swappable Overlay for Accent LED
- Smart Fan 5 features 6 Temperature Sensors and 5 Hybrid Fan Headers
- GIGABYTE™ UEFI DualBIOS™
- APP Center Including EasyTune™ and Cloud Station™ Utilities
Packaging
The AB350-Gaming 3 comes in Gigabyte’s typical retail packaging for their motherboards. On the front it says “Gigabyte Gaming” with the Gaming in RGB lighting, to show you this board does have RGB capabilities.
On the back we have details on many of the different features of the board. There is a full rear I/O layout and list of specifications on the back as well. I think that if you were at Fry’s or Micro Center you would have enough information on the board to make a educated purchase.
Getting everything out of the box as far as accessories go you have two SATA cables, an RGB extension cable, rear I/O shield, G-connector, driver and software CD, user’s manual, and multilingual installation guide.
