ASUS P7P55D-E Premium LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Intel Motherboard

Pros: Stylish
Well Designed
Future proof in some features
So Far works Flawlessly
Overclocks nicely
Used mostly for gaming and works awsome
Asus quality

Cons: None yet

Other Thoughts: Core i5 OC 4.01GHZ
Kingston HyperX 1600 8GB
Seagate baracuda 500 GB x2
Hitachi 1TB
XFX HD 5850
Corsair Obsidian 800d case

Pros: Another Surpurb motherboard from Asus. For the past 10 years I have been a loyal AMD user. It was a tough decision to change to Intel. Im glad i did. Flawless install with a I7-860 CPU. Excellent layout. Booted first time.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Dont understand why people complain about the sata port layout being off the edge of the board. It makes it so much easier when you have larger video cards. I had a older Asus Crosshair and it was a pain in the neck to access the sata ports when you had 2 video cards in sli.

Pros: Never thought I was the type be spending nigh $270 on a motherboard, but I supposed if I would dance I would pay the piper. Glad I chose the P7'D-E. It's everything I'd hoped plus some perks. S-ATA and USB3, for example, don't serve me much at the moment, but I'll be quite happy the day they do. ASUS bios is wonderful, users manual is sensible, design is appealing. Overclocking was a breeze with the i7 860 i paired with it, and no memory problems as of yet.

Cons: Packaging is baby blue, hoped for the metallic cobalt. Never really been too impressed with ASUS' bundled software, but that's barely a concern.

Other Thoughts: No whine/squeal, this one runs silent, runs deep. Fifth ASUS board purchase for me, 3rd sequentially, and I've never had a reason to complain.

Pros: I did my home work on this purchase and got the PERFECT memory for this mobo... G.SKILL PIS Series Model F3-17600CL7D-4GBPIS. --

I have my proc (i7 870) running like a rock @ 3.66GHz with zero overvolt on the CPU! I am running 1.6 volts to the memory, but this is well within spec for this RAM.

Cons: All minor... Would be nice to have more PCIe lanes for the price, SATA3 is driven by a Marvell controller that does currently support TRIM... That's it.

Other Thoughts: I have the i7 870 I dropped into this board running @ 3.6GHz, with the memory @ 2GHz (4GHz dual channel), rock solid. The memory runs perfect @ 2.2GHz, but that limits my OC to 3.3 - 3.5GHz. Running the BUSclk @ 166 brings the memory down to 1,998MHz DDR, but the CPU upto 3.66GHz becuase I can increase the multiplyer.

Pros: Lots of features and connectivity.
Advanced AI overclocking, turbo remote, if that's what you are looking for.

Cons: 8 SATA connections. 6 of which are one controller.
No rear onboard SATA connection. Comes with an expansion slot Y connector to add 2 rear SATA inputs, but if your 6 input controller is set for raid, you are hosed.
All or nothing if want to use raid on the 6 inputs.
If you do attach a non-raid drive (E-sata for example) to one the raid configured inputs you will certainly have problems.
If you hot plug it, it will work fine, but if you restart it will mess up the HDD driver when it configures raid. So if you
use one of the 2 non - raid inputs for your boot drive and the other for your DVD, everything else has to be raid, a true mess. For $300 I expected better (a lot better).

Pros: The design of this board is basically good with a couple of exceptions and has better than their normal manuals except for certain missinformation...

Cons: Asus lists several ddr3 ram selections as compatible but they require a voltage to run stock speeds that will damage the CPU according to Intel...Forget overclocking they will not even run at normal speeds..Bad information ASUS. The ram maufacturer even told me not to use their product in this board [Mushkin 996657 4gb kits] because it required too much voltage to run at stock speeds. So watch any ram that requires over 1.65v because it could damage CPU to run at stock speeds--Do not trust the compatiblity list in the manual or online as it is incorrect.. The other problem that came up was installing the remote. It uses very small wires and a locking female plug that is impossible to remove once you put the board in the case. Hands do not fit into the space to pull it out and tools slip off of it because it is made of very slippery plastic. So if you try tools on it they will slip and break the small wires!!!

Other Thoughts: Asus was aware of this design flaw and included an addendum slip in the box that warns one to grasp firmly and not pull wires when removing this plug. But you can't get a hand on it when in the case and it has locking nubs that hold it in too firmly. So I now have a broken remote plug. The addendum should have warned that any uninstallation of the plug must be done out of case and even then very carefully because of locking nubs.Asus owes a free remote to anyone having thew plug removal problem that I had.

Pros: Works as advertised with system below.

Cons: No problem.

Other Thoughts: Intel Core i7-870
ASUS P7P55D-E Premium
ZOTAC GeForce GTX 295
Kingston HyperX 8GB (4 x 2GB)DDR3 2000
AuzenTech X-Fi Forte 7.1
4xOCZ Vertex Series SSD 60 GB in Raid 0
Seagate Barracuda XT SATA 6Gb/s 2TB
HP CD/DVD Burner Model: dvd1140
Power Supply Seventeam ST-750ZAF 750W
Computer Case COOLER MASTER HAF 932
ZEROtherm CORE92 Socket 1156/1366 HDT Cooler

Pros: Every feature you can imagine.

Cons: Manual memory compatibility pages may be misleading. They show support for several different types of memory modules many of which cannot be used with the Core i5 / i7 CPU unless over volting the memory controller is performed within the bios. According to Intel, the Core i5 / i7 memory controller must not be driven hader than 1.65v by the memory. The OCZ3P16004GK is said to be compliant, but not without over volting.

Other Thoughts: The RS232 connector is located in the far upper right hand corner of the board. The board does not come with an RS232 header and the longest one produced is 10.75 inches long. The header cable barely reaches across the board to the rear of the case and rests tightly across the memory and side of the CPU heat sink.

Pros: All the bells and whistles you could ever want. Well designed and easy to physically work with.

Cons: LDA1156 does not support triple channel memory. If you need triple channel memory, get an LDA1566 board. Additionally, the LGA1156 Core i7 only has 16 lanes of PCI-E total, so if you plug in two video cards, you get 8 lanes each. The LGA 1566 Core i7 are 23 lanes which is much nicer. Lastly, there may be an issue running 4 sticks of 2GB ram modules; e.g. it may not be possible to populate all of the sockets, at least not for the OCZ3P1600LV4GK kits that I bought.

Other Thoughts: The RS232 serial port connector is on the wrong side of the motherboard board. If you already own an RS232 header header cable, it may not reach. My RS232 header from the Asus A8N-SLI reached, but it was tight.

Pros: Works as advertised.

Cons: Won't do the luandry.