Pros: It was fairly easy to set up in Win7 (after tweaking a few things in BIOS for the "legacy" OS, and swapping up to Win10 proved no issue as well. Speaking of, the BIOS in general is really nice.

The steel shrouding around the graphics card slots makes perfect sense with the weight of cards today.

The board looks fantastic and jet-black, no touch of green or brown like a lot of circuit boards.

It overclocks fine, no issues from a 4.6 to 4.7 OC on a 6600k Skylake.

Cons: I think the board is causing occasional failing to POST, but I'm not sure exactly why. It seems to happen after a reboot, even with "Fast Boot" turned off. I'll get constant long POST beeps, and I have to manually power off and then power back on, at which time it will be fine. Quirky!

The lights sit on a yellowish translucent part of the board, and that color of the board taints the light coming through. Not horrible, but some colors look bad. Not a big deal, I played with the lights for a few minutes and got bored, just left them red and that's fine.

I couldn't seem to get functional without a DVD drive, because I couldn't get to the internet without them. So I had to plug in a DVD drive and get those installed. That was a little surprising, other modern boards I've built with haven't had that issue.

Other Thoughts: I purchased this locally in a combo with my processor. I went with this board over the M5 due to the LAN, being this one is Intel. The lighting, though neat, is a poor excuse to buy this mobo over another. But overall it works well for my needs, and MSI has been a good brand for me for a long time.

Pros: Style
Design
Lighting
State of the art technology like 3.1 usb.
Lan has LED back lighting making it super easy to find in the dark.

Cons: Says it can support memory higher then 2133 but you have to boost or overclock to do that and you cant do that and turbo at the same time. Game mode/turbo disables the memory boost. Really stupid.

Mystic LIghts stay red all the time. Flash and other options would never stay set unless the app was open all the time. (Don't know if this was a board problem or how it works)

Had to RMA the board after it died from its own AUTOupdate app breaking the bios.

Other Thoughts: The board worked great after install no problems, played league of legends at max with 70 fps, with optimal settings (medium/high) for my Television as a monitor I was getting up to 220 fps. Played fallout no problems and lots of other things. I set this up in a green case with green LED fans. I installed the utilities for the motherboard to set the mystic lighting options and everything went south. While it was still working the utility would only set the flash/breath/pulse options if I selected the option and then left the utility open. If I closed it, everything reverted to solid on. At no point was I ever able to change any LED lighting colors to anything other then red despite the utility saying it was set to any other color. I thought this just might need updating so let the MSi auto update do its thing and the computer began to crash under any graphics load. Graphics load could be as simple as maximizing a youtube video or a minute or two into any game. I reinstalled windows to try and fix this. I tried running the autoupdate app again and it again installed more updates and restarted. The computer never restarted. If I tried to reinstall windows from the Cd drive it would lock up on the windows logo. I took it in to a computer shop and they ended up trying to flash the bios and of course it froze during the flash and now the MB is dead. Now I have to RMA and takes this MB out. Going with a different manufacturer this time around as there are far too many problems with MSi and the updates on the internet. Don't want to risk this again. Real shame as I was really excited about MSi and this board in general. I chanded to an 1151 build just for this board.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Randall,
Thank you for the feedback.Can you contact our MSI support team directly provide us with the system BIOS version and hardware's configuration you're testing with so that we can better assist you. Please do not hesitate to contact us directly at usreview@msi.com or by phone 626-271-1004 M-F 6am to 6pm pst. and we will be more than happy to assist you, thank you.

Thanks for choosing MSI

Best Regards,
MSI Review Team | usreview@msi.com

Pros: Nothing

Cons: DOA

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valuable Customer
Sorry to hear about the issue you reported. Before considering an RMA can you check following steps below since many reasons can cause the situation like this ,
1. Check and make sure that power are connected firmly, clear CMOS.
2. Check your other major hardware’s (memory, video card, CPU and power supply) to ensure that they are not the cause of the issue.
3. Check for bent pins on CPU socket. and test system out of the case to eliminate any grounding issue.
4. If you need further assistant, please feel free to contact our technical support department directly at 626.271.1004 from M to F, 6am to 6pm Pacific standard Time.

Thanks for choosing MSI

Best Regards,
MSI Review Team | usreview@msi.com

Pros: It looks nice, easy enough to figure out the bios

Cons: No bios reset button, no way to recover original bios in case of a bad flash.

Other Thoughts: This board worked great until updating bios fro. V1.50 to v1.70 using live update. Computer shut down during bios flash process and never restarted. Error led indicates cpu not present or fail. Blue led on board Flashes 1 medium flash, 8 short flashes, 3 long flashes. Have tried swapping/removing all components except cpu (no one else I know has a skylake processor). Super annoying.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Alexis,
Based on the symptom you reported, we suggest you checking following steps below since many reason can cause the situation like this,
Clear CMOS with jumper or battery.
reseat the video card if you have one.
If you need further assistant, Please do not hesitate to contact us directly by email at usreview@msi.com or by phone at 626.271.1004 M-F, 6AM to 6PM PST. We will be more than happy to assist you.

Thanks for choosing MSI

Best Regards,
MSI Review Team | usreview@msi.com

Pros: Zero issues after 2 months of use, and I've had it on almost 24/7 either uploading stuff to the cloud, running FoldingAtHome, or playing games.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: MSI is a go-to brand for me, especially when it comes to motherboards. I have never had an issue with their products.

Pros: LED lights, Features, looks, performance.

Cons: Motherboard feels flimsy, had to rma first one due to damaged pins on cpu socket, second gpu might interfere with sata plugs.

Pros: Being able to install Win 7. Drivers on supplied disc worked the first time, and again after upgrading to Win 10 when the Lan device failed to install with Win 10. I/O panel is insulated, neat feature. Led Control.

Cons: I'm going to have to go with others, the Sata locations aren't optimal, useable, but not optimal.

For my NZXT Source 530 case, the jfp1 is a bit further back and no labeled on board, but the wire length from the case was adequate and the manual gives the pin labeling.

Other Thoughts: Installed all of my hardware, booted to bios and enabled Windows 7. The board was already recognizing my USB keyboard and mouse so no issues there. Loaded Win 7, installed drivers from both the MSI MB disc and the MSI Vcard disc and everything worked well. Did my updates and SP1 for Win 7 and began to update to Win 10.

After Win 10 was installed, I lost Lan. The device manager would not recognize the driver already in place. Reinsert the MB disc and try to install again... nothing. I had to manually locate the driver on the disc to get it to install. Once that was done, everything was back to normal so to speak.

Oddly, if I went back into the Bios and tried to turn off the Win 7 and go to Win 8.1/10, the system would not restart, it would only reboot to Bios. I put it back to Win 7 enabled and it works fine.

Some of the software that comes with the MB is nice, but I think they could have done more with less so to speak. A few less programs and a bit more functionality in them.

The LED control is nice, but the function is limitied. I mean, c'mon, breathing, random, single or double flash or off, and music for the Audio leds, that doesn't really match the music beat. I think there could have been a lot more control offered for the leds. I would also like to see headers for case and fan leds to function under the controls.

All in all, it's a nice board for the price, but I think there are missed opportunities for this to be a great board. I hope they do some revisions for the future.

Pros: Once I got it going, I was just putting up with the 150 second or more BIOS boot to get to Windows 10 load screen.
Seemed it was going to work out good for me ...

Cons: Then my SSD 500 gig hard drive became corrupted after 6 weeks. Reformatted and reloaded Windows 10 as clean install.
PCIExpress NAS drive (4 drive raid) configured as individual drives. After about 2 hours of use, NAS started "forgetting" it had 1 or more drives (drive lights went out) and yet Windows thought they were there. RMA'ed the motherboard since I had it more than the 30 day return window at Newegg.

Other Thoughts: Remains to be seen how long I will be out of action ...

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Louis,
Sorry to hear about your feedback. We would suggest you to contact our MSi support team before considering RMA since many reason can be the cause of your issue. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the product, please do not hesitate to contact us directly at usreview@msi.com and we will be more than happy to assist you, thank you.

Thanks for choosing MSI

Best Regards,
MSI Review Team | usreview@msi.com

Pros: Board drivers (including LAN) were on a disk with a simple install, was up and running in no time at all. (Just be careful to not add stuff you don't want by accident)
Lighting control is actually a lot of fun
Supported installing windows 7 (with a download from MSI) without a lot of hoops to jump through other than the download.

Cons: I'm told it doesn't overclock well, but since I have an i3 that I'm not (and can't) overclock, it's not a worry for me.

Other Thoughts: It's not really a negative but the LED lights can change colors, which is rather neat, but the board itself is red and black, so any lights that aren't red don't really work unless you already have a lighting scheme for other reasons (like LED strips)

Pros: None

Cons: Board kept freezing within the BIOS. Needless to say, I couldn't install Windows. Returned to Newegg. I'd advise looking elsewhere for a board.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valuable Customer
Sorry to hear about the issue you reported. However since many reasons can cause the situation like this, before considering an RMA please feel free to contact our technical support department directly at 626.271.1004 from M to F, 6am to 6pm Pacific standard Time.

Thanks for choosing MSI

Best Regards,
MSI Review Team | usreview@msi.com