ASUS Maximus III Extreme LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: usb3, sata3, nice overclocker, bluetooth, overall solid and nice board

Cons: i was gonna dock a egg, but then figured i shouldnt cause i knew in the first place that the 2 sata3 ports doesnt support raid

takes about 3-5 seconds for the initial beep to boot up, but after its on, the board is rock solid

Other Thoughts: wouldve been nice if asus brought back the waterblock maximus boards like the first generation that way i wouldnt have to spend more for a mosfet waterblock

maybe couldve thrown in 2 more usb3 ports

Pros: I've never built a system before. Always bought Dell. But I wanted to build a system for video editing AVCHD footage. Anyway, my first build ever went easily with this board. What's nice is you can overclock this in the bios without knowing anything about overclocking. With a Corsair H50 cooler and a i7-875K, this board rocks!

Cons: Nothing to report.

Other Thoughts: The bios are easy to overclock even for me, who knows little about the subject.

Pros: I am running 2 HD 5850's in crossfire at x16 each. You Can get full pci bandwith because of the NF200 chip thats why its there. i have a card in slot 2 and in slot 4 and performs flawlessly. for whatever reason when i had the cards in slot 1 and slot 3 it would run X8 and x16. If you dont own the board then maybe its better to not chime in.

Cons: None. Its expensive but it worth it. I have owned 3 asus P55 based boards and this one is my favorite. I have my i7-860 running at 4.2Ghz with the H50 water cooler and its awsome. Newegg is awsome and Asus.

Other Thoughts: This board is a joy. I empathize with those who are having trouble with their boards. It maybe that something isnt right and needs to be returned but try slot 2 and 4. It has worked for me and hopefull for you guys too

Pros: None, i don't own it, read other thoughts.

Cons: None, i don't own it.

Other Thoughts: Okay, i don't own this board. But you need to know how the pci-e lanes work. You are not going to get x16 for 2 cards. The way it works, is the cpu has 16 pci-e lanes. 8 lanes go for the first gpu, and 8 lanes go to the nf200 on board, which in turn supplies more lanes for other devices. But if you have just one gpu, you will get a full x16 lanes. But if you have 3 gpus, one will get direct 8lanes to the cpu, while the others will get 8/16x lanes (Because of the nf200). So even though you have 2 additional cards operating at 8x and 16x they are still going to be only fed to the cpu in 8 lanes after the leave the nf200 chipset. Enjoy.

Pros: Looks nice, many features for OC and looks nice. All of what other reviewers say but for the price of this board the expectations are high as they should be.

Cons: Simply put the claim to running 16x is just not true. I have played with changing slots till blue in the face with my GTX 275 cards and nothing will allow 2 of them to run at 16. This is also noted in the ASUS forums as an issue. I purchased with the expectation I would have this feature and it is simply unavailable. I also own a Maximus III formula and it out perfroms this board by a small margin. My wife runs a P55 Win EVGA board and it also perfroms better. The other 2 boards run slower memory while this board uses DDR3 2000 Dominator GT. Also forget using a memory cooler with a video card in slot 1, it will interfere and push the card to the side.

Other Thoughts: Card in slot 1 gives 8x and 16x if 2nd card is in slot 4.
Card in slot 1 gives 8x and 8x if 2nd card is in slot 3.
Card in slot 2 and 4 reports unrecognized video device in Win7
Can't check slot 5 because double slot card would crush MB connectors.

I gave up at this point. It should not be this hard to make an advertised feature work!

Bluetooth software has 90 day trial period? For this price nothing should have a trial period .. period!

System components the best. i7 860, Corsair HX1000 W, Corsair 800D case, Corsair Dominator GT DDR3 2000, EVGA GTX 275 x 2, Corsair H50 and dual V Raptors in Raid 0.

Looks like an RMA is in my future but you make your own decision, it is a really nice board but for the money, not there for me (and I will get hit with restocking, but that's ok). I think the Maximus III Formula is a much better buy and perfromance is equal or better.

Pros: Booted up successfully on first try - No having to fiddle with the settings.
Overclocking's a breeze - I purchased a set of G.Skills Ripjaws DDR3 2000 and the bios defaulted to the non-overclocked rate of 1333. All you have to do to overclock is set the memory rate to that speed and the CPU and memory timings are automatically adjusted and >gasp< worked.
If you DO want to tweak further, the BIOS is very accessible to letting you have access to just about everything and, more importantly, failsafes (like a backup BIOS) to undo any damage you might have done.

Cons: Bluetooth connectivity for PDA/Smart phone board monitoring currently only works with Symbian, Android and Microsoft Mobile... NOT IPhone.
The onboard audio seems to power down when not in use (energy saving?) causing my connected stereo to hum like the cable is not connected (minor issue, I just adjusted the volume)

Other Thoughts: **install the bluetooth module before installing the board in your case** (If you follow the manual order you'll probably have the board installed by the time they get to the bluetooth module setup)
The "Southbridge" heatsink is positioned such that it's not covered by my GTX260 (unlike my last board, the IN9 32X-Max)
Cable layout for an Antec 900 case is messy. The EZ Plugs are on the left near the top and bottom of the board, regardless of power supply position, you'll have to run a power cable through the video card. SCSI side connectors are right next to the middle hard drive tray on the Antec 900 case so you may have to adjust your layout.
Alot of the cost of this board is in the overclocking/tweaking features. If you can forego those (and don't mind the blue color scheme) the Asus P7P55D will get you near identical performance (complete with the simple overclocking to DDR3 2000 using the Ripjaws)

Pros: Booted right up. i Entered in my settings in the bios and so far it has been great. There are so many features that come with this board its a little overwehlming but i cant wait to try them all. I love the new overclocking features like memlevelup for example. right now i am running a core i7 860 at 4Ghz and ram at 2000mhz with no BOSD's or freezeups. i have played a few games for a couple of hours so far and not a glitch error or hickup

i will write another review when some time passes, but i couldnt help but share some comments now

Cons: its expensive but i believe its money well spent

Other Thoughts: i mainly got this board because it can run 2 graphics cards at x16 for a p55 chipset each but i am getting one card at x16 and one card at x8. im not sure what i am doing wrong but according to the manual that i followed i thought i did it right. any help out there is greatly appriciated