ASUS P8Z68-V/GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Pros: * Works
* No Issues

Cons: * None Yet

Other Thoughts: * Asus makes good stuff, but their warranty process is a pain so hopefully no issues will arise over time.

Pros: Good layout. My first ASUS board. I see what all the rave is about. I like all the onboard debug lights and gadgets.
The MB Utilities are pretty sweet, too.

Cons: The onboard BT seems glitchy, but it could just be user error. This disappoints me because I purposefully bought BT kb/mouse combo (Logitech) and was hoping to have immediate control with my Galaxy S2. That was just for kicks and not imperative to the usefulness of the machine. The BT dongle works seamlessly.
Updating bios and utilities can be a little tedious and confusing through ASUS' website, but it all worked.

Pros: Insanely INSANE voltage control. It even works flawlessly in Windows. Bios was my first foray into UEFI and ASUS has made the old bios screen look amazing. A year running an i5-2500k @ 4.7ghz, I have headroom, but no point in going higher.

Cons: Still torn up about this experience. I can't give it 4 eggs. I just can't.

ASUS for some reason has had trouble adapting to the immense growth it's seen in the last few years. This is obvious when observing build quality and average RMA quantity throughout the generations. This was not my first ASUS product to RMA, but it was my 3rd most painful RMA ever, second only to an old Jetway board and an old MSI 5600FX card.

Something was not right with the board I received. Sound drivers refused to install, on XP and W7, 32 and 64 bit variants, the system simply reported no audio hardware. I fumbled with this for days, nothing worked. I popped a secondary soundcard in to remedy it, but then I tried to overclock. The bios refused to let me change the multiplier, AT ALL. I was not able to do anything in the bios whatsoever without having to power cycle and reset the CMOS. ASUS tech support, level 1, was terrible. I'm sorry guys, but the ball got dropped somewhere. There is a difference between discussing potential troubleshooting ideas and flat out arguing with a customer. Especially one who can troubleshoot down to the component level, which I did, and various points on the board were simply not getting power. The PCB was obviously messed up. Flimsy build quality, the thing just creaked and crackled no matter what I did, and I handle everything with an ESD mat+strap and my Lian Li case makes handling hardware smooth and bend/bump free.

I finally had to ship the board on my dime, which I really had NO dime left over, and had to go back to my 955BE. For 2 months.

C'mon man. See other thoughts about this.

Other Thoughts: Other thoughts? How about not taking the customer for granted? After receiving my board back, minus the original package I sent it in, low and behold, the identification marks I had made on it were still in place. Literally nothing was done to my board. It was like they held it for 2 weeks, then shipped it back with only a yellow ASUS sticker on the ESD bag (same one I sent). Not even an invoice, just a box with cardboard pads and the board. HUH? Well, I was not surprised hooking it up to my testbed that no, nothing was changed. Same readings from the multimeter.

ASUS did remedy this. Sort of? I called, got elevated to level 2 tech, and I got a really cool guy on the phone, he was almost *too* enthusiastic, but man I wish I could remember his name because that guy needs to be teaching seminars on customer support. His voice was like butter and after a half hour conversation about the board and then a bunch of other cool stuff, I had a shipping label in my inbox and about 3 weeks later I had a brand new board, sealed, and it was like Christmas morning hooking everything up and finally seeing everything work.

SO after this wall of text, I still love ASUS, I always will. I just hope they stretch out those growing pains. I'm torn between my Z77 board being ASUS right now, but I have a few weeks to decide on the purchase. Gigabyte has also been good to me, but like I said, I always go ASUS first with new builds. For myself and everyone else I build for.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback on this motherboard and the overall service experience. Please let me know at cl-benson@asus.com or call us at 1-812-282-2787 if you have any questions or concerns on P8Z68-V/GEN3 or one of our Z77-based motherboards, and we'll be happy to assist you.

For support information, please visit http://support.asus.com. For service, visit http://service.asus.com. For motherboard warranty, visit http://www.service.asus.com/warranty.aspx#!Motherboard%20Warranty/c1c20; Refurbished products/accessories: http://www.service.asus.com/warranty.aspx#!refurbished-warranty/c16us. For RMA status, visit: http://am.eservice.asus.com/rmaweb/search/rmCustomerQueryAction.do?.

Regards,
Benson
ASUS Customer Loyalty
cl-benson@asus.com

Pros: This board has everything you will need. Really user friendly if your new to building a computer. Easy O.C. and ALOT of Space to work with.

Cons: Make sure you dont have and ivy bridge CPU or you wont even POST. If you do have an Ivy Bridge CPU you will need a Sandy bridge to update the bios so you can use your ivy bridge, friend of mine ran into this problem.

Other Thoughts: Great mobo, but false advertising is seems. Dont put Gen3 unless i can stick it in there right out of the box.

Pros: great looking board, lots of bells and whistles

Cons: got the board up and running but cant get it to recognize my video card, Ive tried all the pci slots and still nothing.

Pros: Well, the computer starts up when i press the on button.

Cons: This is one of the most horrible motherboards ever concieved. Where to start...... well the onboard lan/rj-45 jack is poop and as such I am forced to constantly disable/re-enable the adapter. The onboard sound card died on me after about 1 month. The "Asus Suite" program which you use to update the mobo's BIOS is useless because it doesnt actually allow you to update anything, ever. Asus's virtu software to integrate in-processor graphics load handling with a discrete GPU is also poop and my screen frequently shutters as a direct result. To top it all off ASUS's customer support was extremely unknowledgable and actually told me to google the problems and see how other Asus owners fixed some of these problems. If thats not enough reason to stay away from their mobo's, I don't know what is. I WILL NEVER BUY AN ASUS MOTHERBOARD AGIN. Back to Gigabyte mobo's for me.

Other Thoughts: Stay as far away from this Mobo as possible.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

We're sorry to hear about the issues you had with the motherboard. Regarding onboard LAN, please try to reinstall drivers. In addition to updating the BIOS via AI Suite you can also use EZ Flash II within UEFI to accomplish the same. We've tested the latest AI Suite on Windows 7 and had no trouble updating BIOS. Please check in Device Manager that Realtek HD Audio is detected, enabled and drivers/software have been loaded. We have not heard of stuttering issue with Lucid Virtu. To discuss this and other issues mentioned above in greater detail and to continue support, please contact me at cl-benson@asus.com or our motherboard hotline at 1-812-282-2787. Thank you.

Regards,
Benson
ASUS Customer Loyalty

Pros: Able to overclock to 4.4GHz and still be stable.
Being able to use mouse in BIOS.

Cons: After getting everything setup I tried booting into windows and it would just freeze and restart into an endless boot loop. It took me about 3 hours of google and looking around the bios to figure out what was causing this. If anyone else has this problem here is how I fixed it: Go into the BIOS, go to Advanced Mode, Advanced tab>SATA Config and change AHCI to IDE.

Pros: Can update to use 3rd gen CPU.

Cons: if you have 2nd. gen CPU you Can update Bios .

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for the feedback.

If you have this motherboard with an older BIOS, it may need a BIOS update to support Ivy Bridge CPU's. To find your motherboard BIOS version, look on the side of the motherboard for a long bar code. The last four digits of this code is the BIOS version. Then, reference it with the CPU Support List here: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/P8Z68VGEN3/#CPUS.
to determine whether you motherboard requires a BIOS update.

You can update the BIOS using an older supported CPU such as Sandy Bridge CPU, RMA the motherboard to us and we will update it for you--call us at 1-812-282-2787, or purchase a BIOS chip at our eStore (http://estore.asus.com).

Regards,
Benson
ASUS Customer Loyalty

Pros: Fast and reliable once you get it set up. Nice layout that allows for large video cards, heatsinks and RAM modules.

Cons: Upgrading the BIOS is a pain!!!! Both times I upgraded the BIOS, I have had problems (used the DOS method the first time, used the web based the second time. That did not work and I would up using the EZ BIOS utility on the motherboard and the video crapped out. Had to reset jumpers and reflash multiple times (recovery flash did not work either)).

Other Thoughts: Good product but I caution users against flashing their BIOS unless there is a problem.

Pros: Up to date features, usb 3.0, UEFI bios, HDMI, SATA 6GB, LucidLogix Virtu, Intel Smart Response Technology, BT GO and is PCI 3.0 ready. With this Asus motherboard p8z68v/gen3, there's no need to upgrade to z77 board. Basically is one of the best motherboard out there. I installed it with Intel core i7 2600k, GTX 470 EVGA graphic card, Corsair 16GB of DDR3 memory, 1000w power supply from Rosewill, a Full tower Thor v2 case also from Rosewill. I have no complains at all.

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: Software and driver for all the features needs to be update