Pros: I love it has 2 M.2 slots, limits cable clutter in the case. Also doesn't chew too many SATA ports if you stick SATA III though it does if you go NVME. Read the manual if this is a concern. Also came with 4 SATA cables, and the back IO panel is nice. I also like that there is 1 slot extra between the 2 main PCI slots to allow more air flow if you run cards in SLI.

Overall speed is nice with a i7 6700k have not tried to overclock yet.

Cons: This is where I have issues. First board was DOA. Newegg replaced it for me no problem and quick. But at the same time it is not allowing me to do what I wanted. This is not really Gigabyte's fault. The IOMMU groups are not segregated on the Z170 chipset like they should be. I should have done better research and not jumped into Skylake, I more was worried about over all physical resources and not down to the board level. As mentioned this is not something they have control over and I am not knocking eggs, just sharing knowledge gained.

Other Thoughts: Mostly knocked an egg do to DOA, seem to hear it happening a bit more than it should and it should be noted.

Pros: Everything else seems to work fine.

Cons: The onboard audio is useless, it suffers from severe EMI, static, noise, etc. The interference is particular bad when playing a 3d game. I had no issues on my previous motherboard with the same video card, power supply, and case. This is the second gigabyte motherboard I've gone through with the same problem (different models). If you read around, there are a few other reviews with the same problem amongst the various gigabyte models. It is hard to say whether this is a design deficiency or defect.

Pros: - Stable
- Intel NIC
- Featureful

Cons: - Security features
- So-so documentation

Other Thoughts: I bought this board to work well, not necessarily to look good, and it's delivered just fine. I haven't had any major issues with this board; granted, I'm running a stock i7-6700K and 2666 RAM (no overclocking attempted -- or really needed -- yet). It's been stable and has all the features I want (no weird gaming-specialized NICs, M.2 drive, etc.). This is in line with my prior experience with Gigabyte boards, which is why I bought it (which is not to say they're perfect, just that they seem solidly engineered/built and I've had good luck with them so far).

The App Center utilities are useful in some ways, I guess, but as of a week ago it hasn't picked up that the F5 BIOS revision is available (latest it reports is F4). I appreciated the stress testing utilities and other features available with the included software (although the "Quick Boot" feature seems to require actually using the BIOS, not the App Center).

One downside -- and it's partly my fault, because I misread "TPM header" in the description -- is the security features, including that there isn't a TPM module included on the motherboard and Gigabyte doesn't make it easy to get ahold of a compatible one. I had to order from a third-party seller on another major Internet retailer -- and it only supports TPM 1.2, not 2.0. Also, the sheer quantity of ill-documented BIOS options relating to security and the boot process meant it took me several tries to actually get the computer configured to a proper Secure Boot state. In a day and age when these features are enabled by default from a lot of OEMs, I'm not sure why enthusiast hardware doesn't include them.

Finally, the documentation's a little thin/perfunctory. "This feature is here." Okay, but what does it *do* and how does it interact with the rest of the system? It's not incomplete, but there is not a lot of cross referencing. MSI seems to do much better in this regard. Best advice I have is to carefully read the docs for all the pieces you intend to use.

Pros: Has all the features a board in this price point should have
Very clean look

Cons: None

Pros: Lots of features.

Cons: The App center is horrible. The SIV to controll even your 4 pin fans does not work but 1 out of 20 times trying to Apply a fixed Rate for the fan speed.

Pros: - Easy to setup
- Does what it should without any hiccups
- No drama, just functions.

Cons: - Shipped with F2 Bios; F5 is current
- Mobo system fan headers are 4 pin "PWM" connectors, but they do not use PWM (except CPU and CPU_OPT): they use constant voltage (which can vary, but is NOT PWM).
- Fan control in bios is not rpm vs. temperature.

Other Thoughts: This has been a very easy mobo to create a new build. It just works. I'll see how well it overclocks in a few more weeks.

Nice one, Gigabyte.

Pros: Good solid-feeling board. All USB ports work and all four DIMM slots work. Bios is F4 out of the box. There are some later betas, but not for me right now. Installed in a very simple system, no intent to overclock. CPU I5-6400 2.7 GHz. 16 GB ram, Samsung 250 GB SSD (both from compatibility list). Also EVGA 650W power supply, EVGA GTX 550 Ti GPU.

Cons: Only problem so far is - problems coming out of hibernation. Sometimes the display will not come on - monitor just shows "no signal:. Other times, I get the message "Your system's firmware did not preserve the system memory map across the hibernate transition". I have to hard reset the machine and delete the save data and boot cleanly. Other times, the machine would wake up as soon as it entered hibernation. I have logged a ticket with Gigabyte, and will let you know things progress.

If not for the hibernation issue, this would be a 5* review.
UPDATE - Clearing the CMOS cleared up a couple of glitchy startup issues. That, plus disabling Wake On Lan in the BIOS, has also seemed to fix my hibernation problems. I have just now tested hibernation multiple times and each time it has restored properly. So, as promised, the review goes to 5*. Am still going to be watchful, but much higher confidence level now.

Other Thoughts: I am NOT going to use Gigabyte's App Center software. I tried it out, but it did - uh, something. First, it decided to "calibrate" my fan speeds which sped them up and I could not get them back down. There goes my silent computer. Then after I rebooted a couple of times, I lost all my USB ports! I ended up clearing the CMOS and going back to a restore point, and now all is back to normal. I had similar weird issues with the apps that came with my EP-45 board (also Gigabyte). It has a very ugly UI anyway and doesn't provide anything I will ever use, so no need to bother with it.

Pros: Great board with 16GB DDR4 RAM installed, Samsung EVO SSD, ASUS GTX 750 TI graphics. This was a replacement board thru Newegg. Thank you Newegg for the prompt return service!

Cons: None so far

Other Thoughts: Definitely recommend this board and Newegg

Pros: For the price I don't think there is another board out there with as many features as this board sports. It's an awesome looking board too that will match almost any color color scheme. (Note: the audio trace path lights up gold) which looked great in my all black scheme build.

Cons: None.

Pros: Great board. Love the design etc etc... there is very little for me to add in addition to the numerous reviews. But there are a couple things to be aware of, see other.

Cons: None really.

Other Thoughts: There's a couple of points that I haven't seen brought up.
1. The LED lighting on this is only amber, and has steady state, pulse, or to audio*.
* with audio, it listens in on the analog audio ports. If you're running S/PDIF (and I can only assume HDMI audio as well, though I haven't tested that yet) the beat function will NOT work when the audio is outputting on the digital outputs.

2. When using M.2 slots, you can be severely limited in SATA ports.
In my case, I'm using a Samsung 950 PRO SSD (boot drive) in the TOP port and a Samsung 951 (adobe scratch disk) in the BOTTOM port. Both cards are PCI-E 3.0. In this configuration the TOP port (when using pci-e 3.0) will disable Sata ports 0-3. And the BOTTOM m.2 slot will disable the BOTTOM PCI-E 16x slot. So i'm down to only 2 usable SATA ports on the board itself.

Depending on what type of M.2 device you're using in the TOP port will dictate how many Sata ports are disabled:
PCI-E 3.0 4x (Disables 4 of the 6 ports: Sata ports 0-3),
PCI-E 3.0 2x (Disables 2 of the 6 ports: Sata ports 2-3)
or SATA (Disables 1 of the 6 ports: Sata port 3 only).

Using any device in the BOTTOM M.2 slot disables the bottom PCI-E 16x slot.