ASRock X79 Extreme6 LGA 2011 Intel X79 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: This is a nice looking, sturdy feeling board with plenty of bells and whistles. The heatsink mounting plate is particularly nice, as it is all metal and very sturdy. This is a major plus if you are using a non-stock heatsink like a Zalman 9900MAX. The BIOS is mouse driven and looks good. The board I got was able to recognize and properly auto-configure a 16gb (2x8) GSkill Trident 2400mhz DDR3 kit no problem. Overclocking is a breeze with the auto OC options in the BIOS. 8 Dimms with support for 64Gb of RAM? AWESOME!

Cons: The only real minor gripes I have with this board is that the BIOS layout is a bit tedious and not the most intuitive. But it isn't a big deal. And the USB 3.0 header on the board, like all boards it seems, doesn't lock the connector to the board, which means anytime you do anything in the case you will most likely disconnect the USB 3.0 header from the board.

Other Thoughts: For anyone checking compatibility, here is my system:
ASRock X79 Extreme6 LGA 2011 mobo
Zalman 9900MAX cooler
EVGA Geforce GTX 670 4Gb
Intel i7 3820 @4.4Ghz
Asus Xonar D1 sound card
Rosewill Thor V2 case
Corsair HX750 PSU
GSkill Trident 16Gb (2x8) 2400Mhz kit
Mushkin Chronos Enhanced 120Gb SSD

Pros: 8 Ram Slots, RAID, Lots of Sata ports (however I have not tested the RAID...), GraphUserIinterface Bios and came with 3.5" external USB 3 panel. USB3 speeds are tasty.

Cons: I docked an egg because maybe 5% of the time this board will hang during post. It hasn't been that big of deal for my application; the user just hits the reset button and then its fine. However I would not recommend this board for a server that would need to reboot automatically. I purchase 4 of these boards and every one has hung on me at least once. My estimate is 3 of them hang 1/40 and 4th hangs 1/10 of the time.

Other Thoughts: This board works quite well and has plenty of ram slots to use up old leftover ram. I purchased 4 of these for architectural workstations which running several graphical applications simultaneaously. i7-3820, 2x8GB Corsair Vengence DDR3-1600, HIS Radeon HD 7750, Rosewill 600w PSU, WD Black 1TB, W7 Pro

Pros: -Looks like it could fit in the Batmobile. My NZXT Switch 810 complements it really well.

-UEFI looks great and has good functionality

-If you don't have an optical drive (or for some weird reason you don't want the bloatware from the disk...(sarcasm)) all the drivers are easy to find on the official website. I'm listing it as a pro because I've had bad experience with that in the past

-Everything is placed almost perfectly for any modern PSU to reach in a full-tower configuration.

Cons: -It costs money. If it was free it'd be perfect.

Other Thoughts: I wanted to buy this MoBo for a long time, I watched a lot of review videos with it, and i don't know, I guess I expected it to be a spectacular experience with high performance computing and internet rainbows flying all over my room. As good as this motherboard is, its still just a motherboard. Its still just a medium for your impressive hardware to use. Its like a painters canvas, no matter how high quality the canvas is, if the paintbrush and paint are cheap and low quality, the painting (or what we focus on more in the world of computing, the painting process) isn't going to be as good.

I made the mistake of over-hyping the product in my mind, but it works great and looks better.. Worth the money in my opinion.

Pros: Low price, 2oz copper (feel the weight), 8 DIMM slots, nice fan on the X79 heatsink, great BIOS, I think that this is a high quality board that is working for me as I expected it to. LGA 2011 offers serious OC potential. ASRock tuning utilities work very well.

Cons: Can't find any.

Other Thoughts: This is the third ASRock build for me this year and the more that I learn about their products the more I like them. The design and production engineers appear to have this technology in very clear focus. Runs my 32GB 2400MT/s memory kit perfectly and did it with one click of the XMP profile in the BIOS. Come on guys, I have been in this field professionally, as an adult since 1967 and have retired with pension from the electrical workers union and I have no criticism of this motherboard.

Pros: Bought this as an open box... Everything worked and booted to the desktop on the first power up... System runs cool and quiet with a slight overclock on the processor and the ram running at 2133...

Cons: Not a single glitch with the board...
Newegg on the other hand, has been getting very disappointing with their shipping anymore.... Their use of FedEx and DHL has me going elsewhere more than I used to.... This board took almost 2 weeks to arrive... If you watch your tracking, you will see FedEx saying that they gave it to the post office for a couple of days, and then they say that they have it again and it just sits at their facilities for 2 or 3 days here and there.... I guess they do that to make it look like it is not their fault, but it is costing Newegg in business for using them...

Other Thoughts: I have purchased around 6 Asrock boards in the last few months... I could not be happier with any of them... They have all worked flawlessly without any issues...
They are so feature rich, that it will take time to check out all of the features...

I-7 3820
Windows 7 64 bit
32GB Kingston Beast running at 2133
OCZ Vector 256 GB Boot drive
Radeon 5870 2 GB
Corsair H-80
OCZ 650 watt PSU

Pros: We will see. Stats are impressive, and it seemed to work well kind of, as will be explained. Price was good for what should be a solid X79 board. However, board is being RMA'd for flaws. This review concerns mostly ASRock's RMA service.

Cons: Motherboard arrived with either one or two dead memory slots (due to the error thrown, it is impossible to determine if one or both slots are the problem). Not a huge problem- mistakes happen even with good QC and when those slots were not used the motherboard seemed to work very well. However, I want to use all 8 slots and two were not working. So, I got in touch with ASRock support. After a very short back and forth (maybe 2-3 emails exchanged) they issued me a RMA. Support was not bad. However, what I cannot fathom is why ASRock expects me to pay shipping to RMA the board. The problem is their fault for sending a faulty product. You would think that under the circumstances they would gladly pick up shipping both ways in order to give me the working product I ordered. Furthermore, it does not make sense that they would have decent customer service but then leave the customer out in the cold with shipping costs. It is simply annoying. If ASRock refunds the shipping, I will update this review accordingly.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Sorry to hear the mainboard's memory slots have malfunctioned which due to nature of electronic product, it can happen. For the replacement product information, please visit our RMA policy at "http://www.asrock.com/support/index.asp?cat=Policy".
If you have any technical questions or warranty issues please contact our Tech Support at http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: Works great!
Not one hiccup.
Every slot and I/O slot is populated and working on my board.

Cons: none.

Other Thoughts: Research what your buying. Make sure everything fits before your purchase.
Don't give a bad review because you didn't read the info that is listed. Don't give false negatives because your PC case isn't big enough for proper placement of your radiator. Bogus Reviews get old.

Pros: The initial specs were nice but, I wouldn't be able to tell you if they worked or not.

Cons: The board D6'ed (Would not recognize any gpu, I tried 2 both worked in another custom built) I rebuilt it from the ground up, tried several methods.

Other Thoughts: ASRock Is normally rock solid, I have built a few pcs using their mobos.
And this happens to be the first bad board I have gotten from them, the big hassle is i was building this for a friend who lives far away so this created a big mess getting it back and forth. So I would say in closing ASRock is generally the board I lean to, this one just happened to ship bad, but it is going to cause me one hell of a head ache =/

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Code d6 usually related VGA cand and PCIE controller.
Please turn the power off, clear the CMOS.
Try with another known good VGA card with 6+6 pins power (if applied).
Remove the CPU to check if the mainboard's CPU socket pins shoudl not be bent.
Re-seat the CPU and cooler if the pins are normal.
Test on other PCIE slots.
If you have any technical questions or warranty issues please contact our Tech Support at http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: Motherboard is amazing. Fast, easy to overclock, and stable.

Cons: The CD with the drivers installs Zynga shortcuts and smartview which are ANNOYING, and I cannot figure out how to uninstall without using anti-malware software. For the price of the motherboard, I should not have to deal with bloatware. Annoying customers with Asrock's greed deducts 2 eggs.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize that you having difficulty with driver CD disc. The Zynga software can be removed by uninstalling Smart View and update Smart View at Control Panel, Programs and features. However, the software is optional to be installed, unless choosing installs all option. If you have any technical questions please contact us at http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: It's a great idea with the motherboard. Gold caps are kind of cool. It's solidly built, with a perfect number of various I/O ports.

Cons: My first board had to be RMA'ed. The first time, the 2nd PCI-e slot wasn't registering my second video card, even though I was sure the card worked. Luckily I had a NewEgg warranty still, so the process was pretty fast (frustrating though, because I had just filled my watercooling loop). I got the second board in a couple days ago and again, could't a video card to register. This time, it was the first PCI-e slot being finnicky with me. After several attempts at nudging my video card and trying all different types of troubleshooting, I disconnected the CMOS battery, waited a couple minutes, re-adjusted the video cards and finally, I got both cards to register. It seems that every time I move the rig, and the video card in the first PCI-e slot gets bumped, the motherboard "forgets" it's there, and I have to reset CMOS. While it's a beautiful board, just know that the slots in the board aren't manufactured well.

Other Thoughts: In all honesty, I could RMA the board a second time, but since my rig never moves, I can live with it. If I were to re-build my rig a second time, I probably would have gone with a different brand, maybe something like the MSI. I highly recommend someone to steer away from this board, but it's such a low price (for Socket 2011), that it may still be a viable option.