Intel BOXDZ77SL50K LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Nothing, complete junk. If I could give it 0 eggs, I would.

Cons: The mother of all failed bios updates. I stripped this thing down to bare bones and it still failed the update. I then found that I had to do it thru windows, then it worked (without the nvidia card installed). I then reinstalled the video card and bam, no boot, nothing again. Removed the video card, but was unable to revive the board. Absolute junk. Never in my years of building pc's have I ever seen such garbage... Just check the list of bios revisions, they tell the story... Stay away.

Other Thoughts: If I rma this thing, I'll still end up with junk, so I guess I'll have to eat this... My fault I guess. As soon as I googled these problems I found that most people that do not want to use the intel video, like myself, had serious issues. While it did run, performance was underwhelming...

Pros: The layout and color coding on the board are all nice. Once bios was updated, the visual bios was easy to use.

Cons: The PCIe slot would not detect either video card tested (Galaxy nVidia GeForce GT 610 and EVGA nVidia GeForce 660 Ti). I tried updating bios, resetting bios, changing settings as suggested on various forums, enabling the integrated video, disabling it... you name it. It would not work.

I returned the first one to Newegg and received a new one. It had the same problem. I noticed another reviewer had a similar problem with no resolution.

My advice, avoid this motherboard unless you are only using integrated video. Intel's support was useless. Their answer was to return the motherboard (after telling me to try another video card).

The rear case fan plug sits right near the PCIe slot and cannot be manipulated when a card is in the slot.

Other Thoughts: I really want to stress how frustrating it was dealing with this. I spent hours messing with settings, bought a spare video card to rule out the video card and had to go through the return process twice. Avoid Intel's motherboards.

On a side note, Newegg's return process was really great and their handling of this keeps me coming back.

Pros: Intel support is the best and they are not going anywhere soon. Z77 board with features of someone wanting a nice machine without SLI and likes older legacy stuff too. (I use PCI boards still)

Cons: There is a bug in the bios. If you change the boot optimizations the board will corrupt the PCI-E bus. Fortunately the onboard HDMI allowed me to return the settings back to get back PCI-E. The latest Bios update does not fix the bug and other people have experience the same problem in the Intel forums so it's real.

Other Thoughts: The board does not have SPDIF on the IO panel but there is an SPDIF hookup via header board capability. Would have been nice had it been integrated but then this is the cheaper board and the next ones up all have it. If you do need SPDIF, keep in mind the header boards run around 20.00 dollars.

Pros: booted up once...

Cons: epic fail.. where is the quality control.. comon intel step it up this is just emberassing..

Pros: CHEAP!!! DUDE, it's about 100 bucks! :) This is in the face of $250 to $600 mobos!?
*adequate USB,SATA,Mem capacity,PCIex16 for a hefty, but not "GAMERMAX" type systems
*solid, well-built with quality components
*Full ATX
*mine had latest BIOS, enclosed driver set easily installed and Intel site has "auto-update" to dl and install updates
*supported by HW monitoring and setting/tuning software
*LOTS of USB stuff (only 4 USB 3) for those with "hangons"

Cons: *Did not take my Corsair Vengence at PC1600, but 1333 (I've not fooled with "tuning" it yet)

Just to grumble a bit, this is an odd mix of "new" and "legacy" with for ex THREE PCI slots and PS/2 plug, but no floppy or EIDE connects. Would have preferred more SATA 6G (only 2) and PCIe x1 or x4, but still.. its a 100 bucks!

Only 2 SATA cables included, not much else

Other Thoughts: NOTE: I am not using a PCIe GPU but just the Intel i7 one
I may try mine at some later date. I also have not yet used the SATA RAID feature (supports 0,1,5,10), but I'll probably plug a RAID eSATA box in later.. I'll update (my painful years of experience is that, other than combining drives, this feature is more trap than benefit)

I will say this as a US buyer that Intel's web site is sooo far above any other MOBO maker I've used that it isn't funny.. you can find anything there including actual English support!

Pros: This is a nice board with great CPU and memory capabilities. I give it two stars because of it's potential.

Cons: I have RMA'd one of these boards already because my 560ti OEM wasn't recognized in the single PCIe slot, as well as various other cards I tried. None of them were recognized so Newegg sent me a new one. Now the new board has the same problem. I spent about an hour on the phone with Intel support and "Freddy" just kept telling me he wasn't sure and that it may be a "compatibility" issue. I told him that wasn't exactly likely, and now he said a team of engineers are trying to figure out what the problem is. It's been a few days and no one has contacted me. "Freddy" didn't seem to be aware that this board's slot is advertised as "backwards compatible" nor did he have any idea about Nvidia's graphics cards. I have a feeling I'm going to have to end up spending more money just to find a board that will work out of the box. I went through BIOS settings, resets, updates, and everything else I could think to try but nothing is ever detected as being inserted into the PCIe slot in BIOS.

Other Thoughts: After explaining that I have an identical, known-working 560ti that I tested in vain, Intel support actually recommended that I go out and purchase another $300 dollar video card just to see if it was a compatibility issue. I pointed out that this was entirely ludicrous, especially since the 550ti is on the compatible product list and the 560ti is almost the same exact card. I always find it frustrating when I can tell a rep more about the technology they are supposed to be supporting than they can find in their knowledge base.

Pros: works out of the box, wasn't picky with memory

Cons: Small annoyances.... the capacitor next to the USB 3.0 Front panel is too close. Not enough fan connections. If you want the MoBo to control the fans, you need 4-pin PWM fans, CPU power connector in a poor position.... minor stuff, not enough for me to deduct an egg.

Other Thoughts: This is with a Intel Core i3-2120 CPU

Pros: After bios recovery, all is good.

Cons: Bios was somewhat finicky when I first booted the system. I decided to update the bios thru windows like have have with every Asus mobo I've used in the past. Once the process was complete, the boot drive could no longer be found, and in the boot sequence menu wouldn't list my Seagate drive at all (even though it was shown correctly on the main page). After making some changes with a save/exit, the board would no longer boot (no video with error beeps), and could not even load the bios. (removed batt, reset, nothing helped) --- bricked!
I've never had a mobo do this to me before, and quickly googled the problem and found it to be common. I searched and found out how to recover an Intel mobo bios, burned a recovery disc and recovered it (with the same newest bios build that failed the first time) with success.

Other Thoughts: If my parents didn't live so far away, I would have sent this brick back and replaced it with an Asus. Since it would have been a huge inconvenience for me, I spent the extra effort and found a solution. (I have a low tolerance for this stuff, if it's new, it better work!)
I hope it now remains stable with no more surprises. So far so good. I'll give it 3 eggs for running fine now, and for not turning into a brick after a failed bios update.

Pros: I've never bought an Intel brand motherboard before, I've been an ASUS guy forever - but I am very impressed with this motherboard. Initially the BIOS was pretty basic, but then I did a BIOS update to the latest (066) build and the BIOS was suddenly "Intel® Visual BIOS" which was a drastic improvement over the bundled BIOS. The difference is night and day, especially for overclocking. Got Windows 8 Release Preview installed without any problems at all. Very happy with this purchase!

Cons: The only Con I found was the USB 3.0 front panel port in the middle of the motherboard seemed a little flimsy, but once connected it worked like a charm so no reason to deduct an egg for that.

Other Thoughts: This board has a surprising amount of overclocking support for a manufacturer's board once you update the BIOS and the price is also very competitive to other Z77 boards.