Pros: High quality PCB
Simple install
Good BIOs
Good supporting software

Cons: Heatsinks seem to be fragile and not secured properly
Limited SATAs (6) might be low for some
Was having issues getting my RAM to run at 2400

Other Thoughts: Very solid product that has Gigabyte quality. Not much else to say about this - it's low frills and just works.

Pros: UEFI and Windows 10 installation on NVME drive worked flawlessly out of the box.

Cons: I bought this board specifically because it advertised a high quality audio amplifier with shielded DAC and high quality capacitors. They even boast about their shielded audio path and have some pretty LED's to show off how it is separated. However, the audio jack seems to be completely unshielded. I hear substantial EMI noise when using the rear headphone jack. The noise seems to be interference from the video card, as noise can be generated when moving the mouse around, and is much much worse (unusably so) while in a 3d game. There is much less noise when using the front jack for audio but it is still there. I will probably return this board for another brand since this is either a design deficiency or a faulty board.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your comments. We apologize for your difficulty with your GIGABYTE product. Please contact us at
newegg-support@gigabyteusa.com with the case number 133940 in the e-mail subject line. We will provide personalized service and analysis to help solve your issue ASAP. If the matter is urgent, please send us your contact number, and we will contact you.

GIGABYTE VIP Support Team

Pros: -Solid Construction
-Plethora of great features for a board this price
-Pleasant light that can pulse in different customizable ways
-Good overclocking features
-Easy to use BIOS
-3 PCI-E slots
-Connectors are easy to reach and well built
-Useful software included
-Looks good for its price point

Cons: -Light of board isn't RGB changeable
-Could use more USB ports
-No other issues so far

Other Thoughts: -Also note that this board has only 6 SATA slots, this was plenty for me but may not be for everyone
-I highly recommend this board to anyone shopping for a solid Z170 motherboard around this price range. Has everything you need to build a powerful system

Pros: The fact of having something to stick my i7-6700K CPU into is great, since it is a great set-up, that processor and the accompanying chip-set. Once I got the thing working, then I was able to find out exactly how it is better than my previous i7-4790K set-up. As for the goodness of this particular model of a motherboard, I could mention in the way of answering that question with the fact that I ordered a different motherboard to replace this one with.

Cons: I suppose my fatal error was installing anything off the disc that came with the motherboard. My advice from my experience, is to drop the disc into the trash immediately, and to use another computer to download a chip-set driver from somewhere on the internet, just to get the Ethernet thing to work so you can be connected to get the rest of what you may or may not need. Or just do it ahead of time and save the driver to a thumb drive. Anyway, as it happened, I used what was on the disc, and it ran absolutely horribly, like at 8% of its true performance. It had version 3 of the bios on it, and I was able to download version 6, which was less than a week old, off the support page for this model NB on the Gigabyte web site. None of the utilities there would open on my computer, so I used the Q method to update the bios, which is putting the new version on a thumb drive and going into bios and click on "update", and it read it off that usb drive without doing anything else, and then just sat there until it said it was done updating. To continue the story, the computer still ran at the exact same low performance level as it did before I updated the bios. I had read in the reviews here that a couple of people re-installed Windows 10 after the bios update, so I did that, and when I got that done, I only took the one network connection, and the audio driver, off the disc to install, and apparently Windows itself either had the driver or downloaded the correct driver and installed it automatically, so I had the computer running without any further stuff off that disc.

Other Thoughts: I really am not sure if I really had to re-install windows, and it may be that I really just had to uninstall whatever I had taken off the driver disc. But, regardless of whether I did the right thing at any of these stages, somehow now the thing works what seems to me to be perfectly fine. But I an terribly disheartened by the fact that none of the utilities for this motherboard worked other than the bios itself, so I went ahead and ordered another MB from another maker which I know has good utilities, and I paid $40 more for that, than I did for this thing, but the lower amount for this one cost me a lot of money and an entire day and a night of depression and frustration and anger and ill ease and loss of sleep and well-being that is nowhere near the value of the few dollars you might think you are saving by buying this product.
Edit to add this update: after getting the more expensive MB, that I mntioned earlier in this review, from another manufacturer, I went back to this motherboard because it actually works pretty well and seems nice in comparison to the one I thought that I would replace this one with, since it ended up with bent pins from just putting the cpu in, the same cpu, by the way, that works perfectly fine in the Gigabyte motherboard that I am using to type with at this moment, while the "new" MB I got failed to ever post.

Pros: Fast, tough, and not too crazy looking to mis-match too many builds. A CRYORIG H5 Ultimate will fit with Corsair Vengence memory. The fan must be moved up a bit, but it's part of the cooler's design and not too difficult.

Cons: Documentation is lacking a bit. It could be more in-depth, covering at least the ins and outs of UEFI, GPT partitioning, etc. I believe this is what is tripping everyone up.

Other Thoughts: THINGS TO REMEMBER: This is a new motherboard that supports UEFI. Basically this is what you need to know:

If you don't know how to implement a GPT disk partition during installation, go into the BIOS and disable everything that says UEFI. Load windows like you're used to, and you're good to go. If you do want UEFI, make sure you format the drive as GPT, and don't use the windows installer to format afterwards. Just install on your previously created GPT partition and go. If you don't follow these instructions, you will not be able to boot to your windows drive after installation.

This took me nearly a week of dedicated, intense troubleshooting to figure this out. Most would give up before I did, and I must patch up things with the wife... she hasn't seen me much!

Secondly, update the BIOS. Some have suggested it fixes certain errors with SSDs. I updated from F3 (provided) to F6 and saw great gains in boot performance and stability.

Laastly, put windows 10 on this thing. It definitely moves a bit smooth

Pros: - I liked the layout
- Everything worked the first time

Cons: - Gigabyte still has terrible instructions, but I think all MB manufacturers do

Other Thoughts: Very solid MB that can be used in a variety of builds from all-out gaming, to casual use. Easy to setup and use.

Pros: It booted, seems to be running fine, drivers all installed effortlessly, pretty much as to be expected.
Good features for the price

Cons: The adapter for the controllers for the front I/O panel was a bit different. I can't seem to get anything out once I've plugged it in, so beware.

Pros: If anyone has concerns choosing this motherboard, because of a lower price, do not let the price fool you. This is a high quality motherboard, and I'm surprised that it's price is so low. This board is great! Also I've heard people complain about installing Windows 7, why not spend $100 dollars, and save yourself a headache and a peace of mind. You can go wrong with this board, it has all the new up to date tech features. Look no further this is the high quality inexpensive best deal ever board for you.

Cons: None

Pros: Fired right up and has given me no issues, audio is much better than my old motherboard and I love the orange light. Fit my NZXT phantom 410 Just fine, case had the appropriate standoffs locations for the motherboard. So far very happy with this board.

Cons: None.

Pros: Board functions great with all hardware.

Cons: Upon initial installation had continuous reboot (Same as Mary's post), discovered that CPU was damaged by aftermarket Fan Heat sink. Costly mistake on my part.

Other Thoughts: This is the 3rd board I have used on builds and only problems were the connections for power are hard to seat and my stupidity for using an aftermarket Fan/Heat sink not designed for this CPU.