Pros: Looked like the high quality I would expect from SuperMicro... boy was I deceived. Ordered this board Thursday 3/17/2016 to pair with a new i5 6600 and 16 GB DDR4 Quad Channel G. Skill Ripjaws.

Cons: I received this motherboard from Newegg a day sooner than I anticipated. However once spending an hour setting the system up no matter how I configured the ram on it, it continuously beeped with an error 55 code. Not to mention the wrong backplate for the case was in the box. I opened a chat session with NewEgg and the best they could do on an even exchange was 10+ business days...15+ for a refund and transit time to order a replacement. I work from home this means at 10 days unpaid leave I would lose $2800 before taxes.... 15 would be $4200 dollars. Completely unacceptable...by any standards. Even hard drive manufacturers have some deal where they will ship you the replacement with a credit card number and then once you receive it they you ship them back the dead product and so long as the receive it you don't get charged.

Other Thoughts: As of right now I wouldn't recommend NewEgg or SuperMicro to anyone. I will be contacting SuperMicro tomorrow during normal business hours and see about getting them to overnight me a replacement with a hold on my CC. Maybe I'll have better luck that route.

Manufacturer Response:

We are sincerely apologize the issue you are experiencing with your motherboard. Please kindly contact our technical support so that we can find out more about your configuration and work with you in finding a solution. Please see the below technical support contact information:

Phone: (408)503-8000
Hours: 9:00 a.m – 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time (Monday – Friday)

Email address: support@supermicro.com

You can also submit your issue online: https://webpr3.supermicro.com/Support/login.aspx?

For RMA Service, we offer the cross-shipment RMA service. Please kindly contact our RMA Department for more information.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any question.

Thank you!
SM Technical Support

External Link(s):

RMA service|

Pros: Idk where to begin the board is fantastic. You can tell Supermicro is new to the consumer space, but this is a rock solid board. I've used supermicro in my servers and workstations for a while now. (back to the days of daughter boards and 8 AMD CPUs) I've had no issues with my boards or any of their packaging.

Cons: Ill have to say my biggest beef, is verity. Id like to see things like more USB ports or other IO options. But again supermicro is new to this territory.

From other responses I've seen people have had issues with packaging and BIOS. Im happy to report that I have had none of these issues, besides slight instability problems with a few different DIMM sticks with XPM. I'm going to attribute this to Super micro's normal use of ECC reg ram in their normal market moboard. I just had to manually set the timings.

Other Thoughts: I got my board from another vender but I wanted to share my experience with everyone. If your looking for a good looking board this is it. Ill say its lacking features wise but that's something supermicro has to develop overtime. Im excited to see these on the market and must say its about time supermicro!

I'm vary excited to see what supermicro can come out with and Im vary anxious to see what else comes out of them.

Manufacturer Response:

Thank you for your comment! Supermicro needs your comment to improve our quality and service. If you still have any question, feel free to contact us. Please see the below technical support contact information:

Phone: (408)503-8000
Hours: 9:00 a.m – 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time (Monday – Friday)

Email address: support@supermicro.com

You can also submit your issue online: https://webpr3.supermicro.com/Support/login.aspx?

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any question.

Thank you!
SM Technical Support

Related File(s):

How to flash the BIOS with Superflash

External Link(s):

Supermicro C7Z170-SQ|

Pros: - good motherboard layout
- no unnecessary fluff software to install
- responsive tech support. (had to call twice and I got a human on the line within a few minutes)
- decent looks without all the over-the-top marketing and superlatives (i.e. not the "Super Mega Extreme Pro Gaming Series with extra gold connectors!")

Cons: - BIOS is terrible, just an awful experience. Options are hard to find, text overlaps in areas and the navigation practically requires a mouse because the keyboard short cuts are not useful (and everyone know mouse navigation in a bios is always clunky).
- Updating the BIOS is a joke. There are no tools to help you, you have to create a DOS boot USB and and copy the BIOS updater and ROM to the root of that device. Even then, when I tried to update the BIOS it did not work, I had to spend two hours on the phone with tech support before we realized there were typos in their ROM file.
- I tried overclocking my i5-6600k and my memory and the system was very unstable and I still could not achieve decent benchmark results.

Other Thoughts: - I think super micro has a lot of promise down the line, but they are simply not there yet.
- They are trying to leverage their server brand to demonstrate quality and reliability but if we're being honest they have always been the bargain brand for server equipment. Not that this should reflect badly on them, my company used their products for years which is why I was interested in giving their consumer products a change.
- I would not recommend this product until they at least release a few more bios updates and personally I'd probably wait until the next iteration of hardware.
- I did RMA this board because of the instability issues I had so it is possibly I just got a bad one.

Manufacturer Response:

We are sincerely apologize the issue you are experiencing with your motherboard. Actually, we have an easy BIOS update feature inside the BIOS which is called SuperFlash. Please see the attached Superflash step by step guide as a reference. If you still have any question, please kindly contact our technical support so that we can find out more about your issue and work with you in finding a solution.

Please see the below technical support contact information:

Phone: (408)503-8000
Hours: 9:00 a.m – 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time (Monday – Friday)

Email address: support@supermicro.com

You can also submit your issue online: https://webpr3.supermicro.com/Support/login.aspx?

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any question.

Thank you!
SM Technical Support

Related File(s):

Superflash step by step guide v1.0

External Link(s):

Submit your issue|

Pros: Supermicro server-quality board, nice features and layout.

Cons: Shipped with wrong backplate!

Other Thoughts: I use Supermicro for all my servers and workstations and wanted to try these boards out for standard systems. Ordered two of these boards for work systems, one arrived with the wrong backplate. Hoping that Supermicro can get the correct backplate to me quickly, as the new employee I'm building this system for starts middle of January '16. Would hate to have to install the motherboard without a backplate then remove the motherboard just to install the correct one.

Manufacturer Response:

We are sincerely apologize the issue you are experiencing with your motherboard. Please kindly contact our RMA Department for this issue:

http://www.supermicro.com/RmaForm/

We 'll ship the right IO shield to you immediately.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you still have any question.

Thank you!
SM Technical Support

External Link(s):

Request RMA online|

Pros: Very full featured. Good reputation in server field, I understand.

Cons: Setup is very manual, and requires significant searching for drivers and requires a hardware workaround (for Win7, don't know about other OS).
1. USB works in bios, but stops working during Windows install, so usb keyboard stops working. Only workaround I found was to use a ps/2 keyboard. Consequently you will have to navigate with tab key and arrow keys throughout Windows install, then while on the desktop to find the correct drivers on the web (I used intel's). I tried 3 different drivers, and eventually windows installed one. Note that the drivers shipped with the mb return an error saying the hardware is insufficient to use the drivers (right!).
2. The audio driver and one other (besides the usb drivers) on the driver disk also didn't work. You will have to find these on the internet. Assuming you've fixed the usb issue, this isn't that bad.
3. It has been my experience that good motherboards will automate to a degree the process of loading drivers. Supermicro has not done that. It is a manual process... you pick them and install them one at a time.

Other Thoughts: If there is a better workaround for the usb issue, I would really like to know it, so if someone can correct this please do it. I will bump my rating. And you will have my thanks because I still need to upgrade my wife's computer (graphic artist, so can't be without her computer for an extended time) but I'm waiting until I know I can finish it. At this point I feel like I got lucky to get the usb drivers installed.

Manufacturer Response:

We are sincerely apologize the issue you are experiencing with your motherboard. Please kindly contact our technical support so that we can find out more about your configuration and work with you in finding a solution. Please see the below technical support contact information:

Phone: (408)503-8000
Hours: 9:00 a.m – 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time (Monday – Friday)

Email address: support@supermicro.com

You can also submit your issue online: https://webpr3.supermicro.com/Support/login.aspx?

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any question.

Thank you!
SM Technical Support

External Link(s):

Submit your issue online|

Pros: It works

Cons: Poor attention to detail. The board shipped with hardware and manuals for the C7Z170-M instead of the C7Z170-SQ. I currently have the board installed without the I/O back panel plate because the one it shipped with is for the wrong board.

Manufacturer Response:

We are sincerely apologize the issue you are experiencing with your motherboard. Please kindly contact our technical support so that we can work with you in finding a solution. Please see the below technical support contact information:
Phone: (408)503-8000
Hours: 9:00 a.m – 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time (Monday – Friday)
Email address: support@supermicro.com

You can also submit your issue online: https://webpr3.supermicro.com/Support/login.aspx?

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any question.

Thank you!

SM Technical Support

External Link(s):

Submit your issue online|

Pros: Stable, good features

Cons: None so far

Other Thoughts: I was looking for a stable home workstation board. I got the Supermicro because of their long history of making server boards. The machine has been running 24x7 for the past two weeks and so far it has no problem at all.

Pros: Solid quality and perfect layout.
Comes with PCIe x4 for the SAS RAID card.
USB 3.1 - for video transfer
Easy OC... Just few steps can OC 20%

Cons: So far, system is running stable.

Other Thoughts: My friend just got the motherboard from Newegg. I'm the helper to build the system. I'm surprised that Supermicro has this kind of gaming motherboard with OC feature. System is running the stress testing. So far so good. it should be one of the choices for gamer.