Pros: decent board layout, sli and crossfire capable

Cons: extremely small list of compatible SSDs, many reports of flaky bios (mine too), constantly loses the boot drive and bios update does not take when forced manually. Some people seem to have good luck with this board but not me and based on other reviews I would say about 33% of all purchasers. Will replace it with an MSI board. Goodbye ASUS

Other Thoughts: Used to rely on this brand. Not anymore simply because the kind of problems this board has should have been dealt with before it was made available and there are just too many people having the same problems. BTW, been building systems for 20 years so its not like I haven't seen these kinds of issues and dealt with all the steps to troubleshoot them before.

Pros: Great Mother Board!

Cons: None!

Other Thoughts: Great Mother Board!

Pros: The colors?

Cons: Motherboard arrived in an OPEN plastic bag. Not the usual anti-static bag that MOBOs normally come in. Figured hey lets try it anyways. After 7+ hours of trouble shooting everything after building narrowed down the issue to the MOBO. ( Think someone else may have did an RMA, vendor plugged it in, saw it power up then sent it back to the shelf) The mobo will not boot files. Windows install freezes at black screen after "Loading files" tried different Rom drives, SSD / HDD. Even 3 different copies of different versions of Windows. All the components worked in my other build piece by piece.

Booted to BIOS, went online and looked up known issues and this was one of them. Tried all the "fixes" and nothing...
ASUS customer support wasn't helpful. The usual, "reset CMOS, try different RAM, etc, etc" He went as far as saying that this is the first time this has happened.... -.- (go online and look at all the other users with the same issue) Tried USB 3.0, 2.0, PS/2, not even hooking up periphs and still, crashes at black screen. Hook up components to other computer (different mobo) and BAM, loads right up. I will be contacting Newegg tomorrow morning to get this board out of here.

Now I have to find a MOBO that supports the same RAM and LGA which I sadly built around this.
TLDR: Wont boot any bootable files, BIOS frozen even after all "fixes"

Other Thoughts: Would not reccomend this product.
And would not purchase this again

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

Thank you for your feedback and informing us on your experience with the ASUS Z97-E/USB 3.1 Motherboard. What seems to be the problem with your windows installation? Are you getting a specific error code when attempting to install your OS? Please make sure to update your UEFI to BIOS 0602 for the most recent microcode for your CPU. Also, have you tried manually overriding the Boot sequence to your bootable flash media? You can do this by logging into UEFI --> Advanced Mode --> Boot --> Boot Override. Make sure to double click the bootable disk that contains the Operating System of your choice. If the problem persists, I can help you get started with a RMA to. If you have any further questions you can contact me at cl-nestor@asus.com using N160357185​ as reference to this case.

Thank you for choosing ASUS!

Best Regards,
-Nestor
ASUS Customer Loyalty - US Support

Pros: Always love working with asus motherboards and this one was no exception. detailed manual and solid construction

Cons: My only gripe is the software provided is a little sloppy. Just has an amateur feel to it. Still, it's great for motherboard software but could be much better.

Other Thoughts: Still no generic NIC driver with Windows 7. Must use the disc to install it

Pros: One of the few Z97 motherboards with USB 3.1 support.
Uses an Intel LAN controller, rather than a third party one like Realtek.
Stylish looking chipset heatsink.

Cons: The I/O shield is flimsy and difficult to install. You have to do some tricky maneuvering in order to get the motherboard to fit into it.

Most of the drivers on ASUS's download page for this board have not been updated since mid 2014, plus they use some weird third party installer that sometimes just didn't work. I just manually downloaded the latest Intel 9 Series Chipset driver, AHCI driver (the latest version comes with the latest version of Intel Rapid Storage Technology), Intel USB 3.0 driver (if you are using Windows 7), and LAN driver directly from Intel's website. The latest Realtek audio driver can be found just about everywhere.

Other Thoughts: The USB 3.1 controller is from ASMedia.
You can turn off the orange audio LEDs in the BIOS if you do not like them.

Pros: Awesome sale price, great entry level modern mobo. Runs smooth, very reliable, many excellent features for the bios. The mobo is equipped with a fair amount of input slots for cables & PCI hardware.

Cons: None

Pros: Works straight out of the box.
Has an easy to use BIOS and to support DVDs for when I ended up deleting my drivers.
Audio is great.
Boots windows 10 on an M.2 SSD in only a few seconds. (And it can run to operating systems at once)
Comes with an SLI bridge.
The BIOS can safely overclock to get the most out of everything without damaging it.
The USB 3.1 works

Cons: Only comes with two SATA cables.
The default BIOS settings makes it so that when you have a graphics card plugged in it turns off enabled graphics, and I didn't have a cable for my card. That took quite a bit of time to figure out.
I/O shield was flimsy and slightly mis-aligned.

Other Thoughts: All in all, a great product. If given more budget I would have gone for more, but I would go back to a Z97-E.

Pros: Despite some of the other reviews, I did not have any issues with this board. Fires right up, remembers my bios settings. Unlike most others, I like the orange lights.

Cons: Maybe could use some more sata ports, but I guess you could buy another board that has more if it's that big of a deal.

Other Thoughts: I'll admit this was the first time I've built my own machine, I didn't have any issues, it was so much easier than I thought it would be, being that the motherboard is the heart of the build, I have to attribute the ease to this board.

Pros: I can't list any pros to this board because this main functionality I need from it is broken.

Cons: Motherboard wont save bios settings and constantly resets them to default
Goes directly to "American megatrends" screen on cold boot, only letting me enter the bios settings on restart
Abysmal customer service
If you plan to change settings on this board's bios, please save yourself the headache and buy from a different brand.

Other Thoughts: I bought this motherboard in November of 2015 along with the parts to build a new rig. Sometime right around Thanksgiving it all arrived and with joy I assembled everything. My rig worked well from that day until around the beginning of January when I decided to add on an SSD. A few days after that I noticed that every time I cold booted my computer, it went to an “American Megatrends” screen after POST. The American megatrends screen lists some stats like 2 keyboards, 2 mice, etc. At the bottom it says "Please enter setup to recover bios. Press f1 to enter setup." Upon pressing f1 the computer boots to windows. What I found weird was that now, the only way I could enter bios setup was restarting my computer. Cold boot goes directly to the previously mentioned screen. Then after reviewing bios I realized that it won’t save any settings. Every time I start my PC, bios settings are back to default. Most people probably wouldn’t care about that, but I often use virtual machines for developing android, and working in other development environments. There is a setting in bios called VT-x that allows your computer to run a virtual machine. Now because of this resetting bios, I can no longer use virtual machines which is something integral to my school work.

Thinking my CMOS battery was dead, I replaced it, then again, then a third time. I reset the CMOS via the jumpers on the board, and updated the bios revision all the way to the most current, and then again. Nothing I tried fixed my problem so I contacted ASUS. They gave me an RMA number and asked me to send it in for repair to replace the bios chip. $20 later I mailed in my board and they sent it back in about two weeks. I was super excited to start working in VMs again, but the problem persists. I contacted ASUS again. This time they offered to cross ship me a new board but said it was on back order and would take a week or two to ship. No problem. I decided to wait to avoid spending another $20 to ship it (getting close to 2/5 the price of a new comparable motherboard from another brand). After two weeks I contacted ASUS again on February 9th to inquire about the board. I was told it was still on back order but I could ship my board in for a repair again. After paying the first $20 for nothing, I was not about to repeat that process. I was told they would send it as soon as it came in. It is now almost a month from the last time I talked to ASUS and still no replacement. Nearly three months since I contacted them the first time. That is three months I have not been able to use my computer for school.

I have always been a fan of ASUS. I’ve bought a few monitors from them, and my beast of a laptop a few years ago. Until now I have never had to contact them about a customer service issue so I never knew just how terrible it is. I am at the breaking point of buying a new motherboard from another company just to regain the functionality I need. This MOBO represents the mistake I made in blinding trusting ASUS.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Ryan,

Thank you for taking the time to inform us on your experience with the ASUS Z97-E. I'm sorry to hear about the delay you are experiencing with inventory and ASUS Support. Please forward me any associated case numbers during your time with ASUS Support so I can do more research on your case history. I will make sure to forward your experience to the Management Team to avoid these issues in the future. In your BIOS under Advanced, CPU configuration, then please make sure to select Intel Virtualization Technology and enable that option. Also, if you want me to check the status for available inventory, please contact me directly at cl-nestor@asus.com using N160314553 as reference to this case.

Thank you for choosing ASUS!

Regards,
-Nestor
ASUS Customer Loyalty - US Support

Pros: Worked perfect out of the box, had no issues with any of my devices not working as others have stated. Running 16gbs of ddr3 gskill ram, EVGA 980ti, two solid state drives and an older barracuda 7500rpm HDD with a 4790k. Love the Bios. I have always had good luck with ASUS. Love the M2 port and the usb 3.1.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: Get this board. Great board at a great price.