ASRock Z77 WS LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Met all my needs as far as MOBO's go

Cons: Burnt out in less than a week

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Please contact us with detail problem description 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 almost lost a egg for the lack of intel ethernet but i bought this board cuz of the usb 3, and the x16 times 2 and thats it

Cons: the only con i can see here is the price and a work station board with 8 phases is a joke and is pathetic. what are you doing Asrock if you guys ever get it right it will amaze me. it seems you get most of it figured out and then do somthing STUPID like 8 phases, managment should be slapped

Other Thoughts: if you want a ws ( work station ) you should go with intel ethernet first of all. the person complaning in the reviews about usb 3 should know that the order of download is very important. but hey it says hes a champ

Pros: Board is fast, has great features, is quite stable when overclocking, format is well thought, and it was a snap to install. The UEFI is easy to use and intuitive. Minus the USB3 issues, its a great board.

Cons: USB3 absolutely refuses to work.

I have the latest drivers for both the Intel and Etron controllers and the latest bios. I'm seeing issues like this:
iPhone refuses to sync, terminating in weird errors (like error 9006)
USB keyboard and mouse constantly cut out, sometimes for minutes
File transfers to USB hard drives (even USB 3 compatible ones) fail, often after only a few seconds of moving data

The USB 2 ports work great, no issues when trying the above devices on them. But, there are only 2, and its been nearly a decade since 2 ports cut the mustard.

A bit of research turns up consistent USB 3 issues with ASRock's z77 boards which may or may not (depending on where you read) have been fixed with bios updates. I can safely say that the z77 WS has no fix and for 300 bucks I think that's appalling. Simple QA would root this issue out in seconds.

Other Thoughts: I'm going to live with this board for another week and continue to troubleshoot the issues as I'm not sure yet if they're specific to a single controller. It's a Pro Tools rig with a tedious setup and takes days to migrate to a new build. My only other choice is to return the board for something else if I can't get the USB 3 ports working correctly.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear AsRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. For the USB 3.0 issues, please download and install the driver at " http://www.asrock.com/server/overview.asp?cat=Download&Model=Z77 WS ". Try with another known good USB 3.0 external drives to check if the symptom still occur. For the keyboard and mouse, please plug these devices to USB 2.0 (Red ports) which is designed for. 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