ASUS Maximus V FORMULA LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Extended ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: -Spacious, extremely well organized board
-Lots of fan headers for cases with a lot of air cooling
-I actually really enjoy the UEFI and all of the extra software that comes packed inside.
-6 SATA 6GB/s Ports - Really great for paranoid people like me who raid their main and extra drives. Also really great if you have more then one SSD
-I know this isn't a main feature but i really dig the led from SupremeFX and other lights on the board, mixed with the other red and white LEDs in my case it makes the board stand out.
-The audio on this is absolutely amazing, I have 7.1 speakers hooked to it and the sound quality is amazing
-Optical audio in port, Allowed me to run my XBOX's audio to it and out the 7.1 speakers. Which is great for people that don't have recievers and use their computers as a hub for their tvs
-The wifi card built in with a bluetooth card, my last PCI card only got up to 300kb/s, this one is topping 2.5mb/s
-I'm recommending this board to all of my customers, I build gaming machines for my community.

Cons: -Had a problem with the UEFI EZ Settings, for some reason when i would set it to performance it would set my ram (G.SKILL Ares Series 8GB DR3 2133) to 2134 and it would cause a memory dump BSOD.
-After a BIOS update and all software updates still got the BSOD when trying to play games.
-Finally had to go into the UEFI advance mode and change the profiles.
*-This isn't really a con at all cause i wouldn't take an egg off for it. The board is still amazing, but this might be a problem for people who don't know what really to do.-*

Other Thoughts: I really am impressed by this board, I upgraded from an old Phenom to this with and i5 3579K and Ares 2133 8GB ram. Matched with my MSI Geforce 670 card im ready to start 3dMark11 testing soon to see how much more powerful it got.
Like i said this is a definate buy if you can afford it, I will be putting these in all of the systems i build from now on.

Pros: I'm not quite sure where to begin on this MB. It is one of the most feature packed MBs that you can get. It has just about every type of connection internally and externally that you would want. It also has one of the best onboard audio chipsets of any MB.

The system software that is included is very nice. The ASUS Ai Suite II software suite is very well put together. Some of my favorite features in it are the ASUS Wi-Fi Go!, ASUS Fan Xpert 2, and CPU Level Up.

I also have to say that I love the color scheme and the LED lighting. People are blown away with how cool this MB looks in my setup. The light up logo, audio chipset, and audio chipset LED separation look great.

Cons: First MB had a defective SATA port and had to be exchanged.

Connecting the Wi-Fi antennae was a huge pain.

Install of all the drivers and system software was a bit of a pain. Some of it requires you to go in a very specific install order for the next install item to be able to be installed. This isn't listed anywhere and took a bit of trial and error to finally get everything installed and running.

The water block rubber caps fall out very easily.

ASUS tech support is quite subpar and very hit or miss.

Other Thoughts: This MB is amazing. This would have been a five egg board if I didn't have to dock an egg for the first MB being defective.

My entire system has an amazing red and black them that revolves around this MB that looks so good that everyone who sees it comments on how great it looks.

System Information:
ASUS Maximus V Formula
Intel i7-3770K
Zalman CNPS9900MAX
Arctic Silver 5
EVGA GeForce GTX 660 Ti FTW+ 3GB
2 x 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 1866
Mushkin Atlas mSATA 60GB SATA3 MLC SSD for SSD Caching
2 x Seagate Constellation ES.2 2TB SATA3 HDD in RAID 1
2 x ASUS Blu-ray Burner
Thermaltake Black Widow 850W PSU
Cooler Master HAF XM Mid Tower Case
Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit
2 x ASUS VS247H-P 23.6" LED Backlit Monitor

Pros: Looks
Cooling
Features
Expandability

Cons: Sound (read for more details)

Other Thoughts: This is my first ROG board, I was torn between the Gigabyte G1 Sniper 3 and this gem. Alot of people rant over the color scheme, but I for one enjoy it. I ended up getting the ROG because it had more of the features I wanted.
It has been a rock solid board with no issues other then faulty USB 3.0 rear ports. Had to disable them completely in BIOS as I kept getting windows errors despite the fact I've installed the usb 3.0 drivers. The USB 3.0 ports on my case which are connected to the USB 3.0 header on mobo work great though, so I just keep the rear ones disabled. Even the Dual band WiFi and antennas work flawlessly.

The only gripe, which really isnt that much of a gripe was the disappointment in sound quality from the Supreme FX IV chip. Not as great as I had hoped for. The sound quality IS acceptable but no where as good as my roomates Maximus V Gene's Supreme FX III, but I think alot of that has to do with Creative's bundled sound software package. It also would dim and stutter a bit if listening to music as well as another sound source like listening to Pandora AND playing a game at same time. I guess we still have a ways to go int eh integrated area. I have higher standards for sound as most people so I just ended up disabling it and purchasing a Xonar Essence STX card with Sennheiser HD 598's.

Pros: Feature packed, stable, looks awesome

Cons: eATX requires a larger tower

Other Thoughts: There's a good chance that this MoBo will do more than you will ever want it to do. I took one egg off because you end up paying for a lot of features you probably don't need. If you want a MoBo that will not limit you or your system and don't mind paying a little more, this is your board.

Pros: Great board for enthusiasts. Overclocks pretty good and it looks awesome.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: I waited so long for this board to come out and I am thoroughly pleased. Came so close to buying the Gene board but patience paid off. The only reason why people were not giving this board 5 eggs is because they're butthurt that something went wrong. I'm pretty sure if something went wrong then more people are likely to complain about it that write about how awesome if it is when it does work.

Pros: This board has exceeded my expectations so far. Routinely overclock my 3770k to 4.6ghz for gaming or video transcoding. The board never reads over 32c even after 24 hours of transcoding. The settings for the voltages are a little wonky at first, but once you get the hang of setting the voltage and load line leveling it works like a breeze.

Cons: No cons thus far at the time of this writing.

Other Thoughts: ROG connect seems a bit gimmicky (honestly I knew that before getting the board) but does exactly what it says it will. POSTed on the first try.

Cooler Master Haf X
Intel i7 3770k
Asus Maximus V Formula
Corsair Dominator Platinum 2400 16GB
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
WD Velociraptor 1TB
Seagate 4TB
Sapphire Vapor-X 7950HD
Corsair GS800

Pros: Mobo pretty much does everything as advertised, great bios as well. Had no issues with anything so far.

Cons: None yet.

Other Thoughts: It is an eATX board but it fit just right in my Fractal R4 mid tower case.

Pros: awesome looking(red leds, water cooling block, etc.)
awesome overclocking performance
awesome softwares

Cons: it will be better if the water cooling block comes with G1/4 instead of barbs

Pros: Fit nice in my Thermaltake Armor Case. Loved the red lighting and also the hybrid air cooling channel that is built in.

Cons: Bought this on 2/21/2013. Also bought an i7 Intel CPU, Gskill RAM. GSkill SSD, Zalman 310 CPU water cooling system, EVGA - GeForce - GTX660Ti, and already had a new Thermaltake 750watt PSU and was ready for some nice performance. The RAM was not the right kind (not on QVL) as I ordered the wrong kind so I sat this on the shelf and returned the RAM i intended to get and purchased a QVL RAM. Once i got the RAM, and waited a couple of weeks to build it because of work matters only to get CODE 55 when I tried to boot the system. I discovered that the MOBO would only read RAM installed in slots B1 & B2. I tested all 4 sticks of my Quad Channel Kit and all stick were fine. I searched the ASUS ROG forums and discovered that this is a fairly common problem with this model board, and I also spoke with ASUS Online Support Live Chat Techs and they advised me that I had received a MOBO with faulty memory channels and advised me to return it to Newegg. After I verified the date of purchase I discovered that I could NOT return it to NEWEGG because I was not able to build the system within the 30 Day time frame that NEWEGG gives you to return things. I have Requested an RMA from ASUS, but you have to wait on them to contact you back once you fill out the online form.

So, Im now waiting to return it to ASUS for replacement !!!!!! Im not real happy about this as I spent a great deal of money on a MOBO that is supposed to be "One of the BEST" only to get one with DOA memory channels.

Other Thoughts: This is the second ASUS Mobo that Ive purchased. The first was M4A79 Deluxe that functioned perfectly for about 2 years and I had to return it because of a faulty LAN port. I got a replacement thru the RMA procedure and just about the time that the 3 year warranty expired, the MOBO stopped working correctly and wouldnt run all 4 cores of my AMD 955 Quad Core Black Edition CPU. So since I had no recourse for RMA, I chose this MOBO and was in hopes that this one would be much better. After this latest round of MOBO failure Im fairly certain that I will not purchase another ASUS MOBO in the future. Just too many issues. When I buy something high end like this I expect it to work right out of the box, and not after RMA'ing it for repair. ASUS should replace it with a BRAND NEW board, not fix the bad one. I bought a NEW MOBO, and I want a NEW MOBO when returned, NOT A REPAIRED ONE. Oh well, I guess we cant always have what we want, and what we paid for huh ?

If possible, i will revisit this review once I get the issue resolved and actually have a chance to use the MOBO so I have something intelligent to offer in the way of a MOBO performance review.

I also think its a bit strange that as soon as I have an issue with a MOBO, Newegg no longer has them in stock.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry to hear that the memory channels A1 and A2 are not functioning properly. So you have already tested this by using only one stick of RAM and checking all 4 RAM slots. Have you checked to see if any the pins are bent as this can cause the memory slots to not function properly as well.

Please provide me with your RMA number and serial number so I can check your case or create one for you.

If you have any questions or comments you can email me again at cl-jeffrey@asus.com which I reside in the U.S

ASUS strives to meet and exceeds our customer expectations within our warranty policy.

Regards,

Jeffrey

Pros: fast,easy to install,very cool bios anything and everything you would want to do to that board is on there and with a nice deep color touch,everything went in without a hitch and runs supercool, oh the coolfactor was a nice touch too with the glowing red circuits it just makes it all the much better.

Cons: If this would be your first board you ever put you better get a friend to or have somebody install it for you,not to say its real hard but thats coming from somebody that has built computers for over 15 years.

Other Thoughts: My boot up times are less then 6 seconds but you have to build it correctly with the right parts, I tried to go cheap as possible but with the best pieces I could get. My configuration is a I5 3570k,muskin ddr 3 enchanced memory 8gig(any more then that right now is pointless),Asus gtx 660ti 2g graphics card,mushkin 240g ssd drive,and a V8 cpu cooler from coolmaster.Get that setup and you won't regret it I promise you.