Intel BOXDX79SI LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: -Rock Solid Stable
-4x USB3
-Dual Ethernet
-easy auto overclock
-8x DIMM
-Back2BIOS

Cons: -Can't team LAN(huh?)
-rather have 4x rear panel USB3 and no internal USB3
-only 2x SATAIII
-Frugal Back panel
-Bad x16 PCI layout where with dual slot cards they are right next to each other, I'd rather the top and bottom be x16 and middle be x8 for good dual slot airflow and dual triple slot cards in 2x SLI/CF

Other Thoughts: You can do better for the price(or lower too), the GA-X79-UP4, ASRock Extreme4, and GA-X79-UD3 are good examples.

I bought this because it was an Intel EPP combo deal with a 180GB SSD+i7-3930k for 625 dollars.

Pros: Bought this board a while ago because at the time it seemed like the best of a lot of world. 8 RAM slots (up to 64GB), an internal USB header, oodles of USB 2.0 ports, and other features had me pretty attracted. Not to mention the Intel brand behind it, which is supposed to be rock solid.

Cons: Only two sata 6Gb ports, 6 sata ports total.

As for the bugs, to get this board to work I had to disable the USB 3.0 ports for a while as I waited for updates to come out. The board simply wasn't as solid as I had expected and that left me feeling pretty disappointed. Now, this board is absolutely adequate, but that simply DOESN'T CUT IT when there are MUCH better boards out there, some of which are cheaper and have similar feature sets.

Other Thoughts: Getting this board now might be ok, there's been a significant amount of updates to keep it stable, but overall it shouldn't be anyone's first choice.

Pros: None

Cons: I can't use this garbage. The first one I got from NewEgg was bad. LEDs were flashing on the Mobo indicating, according to Intel, a dead Mobo. The second one did not do that, but I was unable to get into the BIOS. The reason is that Intel says the BIOS was too old to support the 211 package 3820 I-7 chip. But the documentation clearly says that it does. So why would Intel even sell this thing? And this is supposedly designed for the latest version of CPU. It just doesn't work with that. I don't get it.

Other Thoughts: I hate that I am having to send this back to NewEgg and buy something else. Who knows what I will find this time? I have heard that the DX79TO does work with this CPU. I cannot say until I try it. Intel owes everyone that has had this mess a big apology.

Pros: It runs extremely well, except for one large thing, which I will get to later. I have had no problems with it and found setting it up easy to navigate through. Other than the one main con, I find this board fine to use.

Cons: Every once in awhile, while I am watching a video or playing a game, the board will randomly crash. I have checked my video card and It is not that. It is the board. It is extremely frustrating to hold down the power button for 10 seconds, wait a few seconds, and then restart my whole computer while in the middle of a game or a movie, etc.

Other Thoughts: I would recommend avoiding this board, at basically all costs. Intel has been of no help at all, probably the worst customer support I have ever dealt with. As far as overheating, I only had one problem with that, but upgraded my fan and that flew away instantly.

Over all the board is fine, if you can deal with it crashing every so often.

Pros: I built this PC over 3 months ago. The board layout is good, quality is excellent and it looks attractive, but I could do without the skull and cross bones. Setting up a raid zero was very easy, installed Windows 7 64-bit in no time. Boot times are fast, but there is a price, see below.
I am well pleased with the performance and stability, it has been rock solid. It was great to be a few clicks away from overclocking my six core I7 3930K to 4.5 GHz, have better things to do with my time than sit and mess with settings, so that is a plus. Doing video editing, gaming, you name it, this baby didn't even hint at a stutter, so I'm stoked with the performance of my new build. I can't speak to those who say they got their's DOA, I'm really surprised by this if it's so.

Cons: Where Intel gets a big fail, is with its terrible bios and tech support. First off, fan control is really poor. You buy good PWM fans, only to find they just don't respond to increased CPU loads! Maybe if the temps get very high, THEN they respond. Yeah, that's so useful! They do not budge in speed under auto setting, so if you want better cooling you have to manually increase fan speed; so that's disappointing. It seemed they fixed the USB 3.0 issues with an update, but they made it worse....as before, only the USB 3.0 ports were disabled during POST.
What they did not address is their fast boot feature, a three-part option which includes something called 'USB optimization.' Suddenly, with this enabled, the only way to get into the bios, is to use their handy little 'back to bios' button. So, there is no hitting F10 to select a boot drive, or doing anything else because the keyboard is useless until Windows boots up. Boot order also will not retain changes.

Other Thoughts: I had to hunt this USB issue down myself, after speaking to no less than three alleged Intel tech support persons. Intel, if this is the best you can do for tech support, it's inexcusable. Do you not train your people about your products whatsoever? When I called I advised him I was in the bios with the latest update, what the problem was, asked if there was some setting that I was missing. Instead of providing the correct solution, he wants me to re-flash the bios, reinstall the USB driver, reset the CMOS, none of which helped. Callback after dinner, and a third genius also had to take time to read up on his employer's product, and asked me if I would consider reinstalling Windows!!! Are you kidding me? I now have to tell Intel's tech support that Windows has nothing whatsoever to do with their bios? How about hiring me to manage the tech support division? It makes me wish I got an ASUS board, as they & everyone else is WAY ahead of Intel as far as Bios functionality and features.

Pros: Lots of features and a decent layout for what it is worth. The price isn't to horrible and I like the 7 segment BIOS code display on the board.

Cons: DOA. After connecting everything and turning it on, I see a CPU Overheat light on the board. No video, POST, BIOS beeps or anything. Just the CPU Overheat alarm which makes me turn the computer off immediately. Deciding to check the CPU to make sure it is seated correctly, discover it is burning hot. It was seated correctly but now I get nothing from the board anymore. CPU doesn't heat up either. Have to RMA to the board to Intel because it is now outside 30 days.

So now after I get my Motherboard back, I may have to replace the Processor as well (I7 3930k). If you can avoid it, do not get this board. Way to many complaints about DOA to ignore. I wish I wouldn't have ignored all the warnings.

Other Thoughts: Overall I have high hopes for this board IF I can get a working one.

Pros: Has the feature set that I wanted without over doing it. F7 bios update is handy. Board is well laid out. This was a zero hassle build for me and has so far proven to be reliable and glitch free. As with any build, research i.e. download the user manual and tech sheet and become well versed in them before building ANY system.

Cons: More of a software/driver con - Intel's RSTe and Intel's SSD toolbox don't play well together yet. This is only an issue if you are using an Intel SSD and want full toolbox capability while running RAID with RSTe. If you're not running RAID and want full featured toolbox, then don't bother with RSTe until they offer a new iteration. AFAIK this applies to all the X79 boards.

Other Thoughts: I am not a brand snob. My past performance builds included boards from Abit, Gigabyte and Asus - the last being the P6X58D. The DX79SI has been the most pleasant experience so far. BUT, this board is not a tweakers wet dream. If your goal is to cause a brown-out in your neighborhood and a torched CPU, you'll be disappointed with this board. If, however, you're satisfied with simple, sensible, reliable OC'ing and require a consistently stable foundation to your build - this is it IMO.

Pros: Looks nice for what it counts.

Cons: The board failed to accept my DDR3 2400 ram at the true speed. After downclocking the RAM to nearly half the actual speed it finally posted only to provide a blue screen of death almost immediately afterwards. The board now will not boot even to the BIOS and is completely dead.

Other Thoughts: I should have accepted the reviews on this page. Do not buy this board since you can only replace it with another if it dies on you.

Pros: -awesome feature set
-cheaper than competition with higher level feature set
-BIOS has everything you need
-you can flash newer BIOS directly from usb
- Intel fixes BIOS very aggressively because they make the chips / ref design everyone else uses... for this one reason I don't buy any other brands anymore as I have to wait for other guys to run the whole BIOS validation thing, and they don't always release all the fixes Intel does....

Cons: -this is a bleeding edge product, but this applies to all products like this.... not just Intel

Other Thoughts: I see a lot of bad reviews talking no POST

It is system building 101 to download the newest BIOS and flash it before building a machine, end of story.

Download the BIOS, flash from USB using the procedure, load defaults, then you will install Win7 or 8 without a problem and never get a BSOD.

It's unfair to blame Intel if you haven't done this very simple check before you build such a newly introduced product.

Pros: This board is a dream to work with. On-board diagnostics, power and reset switch. And a back-to-bios button on the I/O shield. The bios itself is well organized and fully featured. With the integrated heat sink back-plate, installing a Scythe Mugen 3 Rev B was easy. It booted immediately and I had Win7Pro fully installed and patched in about two hours.

The real jaw-dropper for this board and the X79's is the RAM capacity. Not sure what to do with 32 or 64 gb of memory? With Dataram's RAMDisk, the possibilities are endless. I do a lot of file shuffling and organizing for work. "Legacy mop-up" is the term I like to use. I use RAMDisk as a staging area, or scratch disk, to pack/unpack/inspect/repair rars and zips and such.

I recently unpacked and installed CS6, and used this is as my own benchmark. SSD>RAMDisk was at least twice as fast as SSD>Raptor and SSD1>SSD2 configurations. SSD><RAMDisk transfers are off-the-charts-fast and actually approach the theoretical speed of the SSD.

Cons: Only one gripe and I'm sure there's a good engineering reason why; I need at least two more SATAIII ports. I think 4 SATAIII and 2 SATAII would've been a better mix but I'm not an engineer. Given this limitation, I have not had an opportunity to use the RAID.. but I am using the exact same RAID tech on a server board and have no complaints. The GTO has the consumer version RAID.

Other Thoughts: I purchased in May and the manufacture date was 4/12. The stock bios was dated 10/11. In theory, all the boards in stock have a bios that *should* boot all the 2011 chips.

Ordering memory is a bit tricky. I recommend reading and re-reading the official Intel data sheet for the exact specification and configuration. The QVL list is slightly dated and the some vendor's configurators were.. not wrong but not always optimal either. I used Kingston LoVo at 1.35v. 32gb at 1600. It's not the fastest configuration but it's a nice sweet spot for capacity, speed, value, and most importantly, stability. The XMP profile worked just fine but did require a bios update to achieve the correct speed and voltages.

In other news.. this is a an advanced motherboard with some things crossing over from the server lines. Simply put, if you don't know the difference between the DX line and the other Intel board lines.. this might not be the board for you.