Pros: In response to my previous review and 3-star rating -- Gigabyte Support for Newegg customers has sent a new Alpha BIOS to me which has fixed all issues except for the very minor annoyance of switched SP/DIF port identifications. I can easily live with that. I'm only telling Gigabyte this so that they can get it 100% sorted out in the final BIOS update.

Cons: I didn't mention it in my first review, but there are lip-sync issues between audio outputs and HDMI video output. It would be nice if Gigabyte could offer BIOS or Realtek driver settings to deal with these issues -- one for HDMI (Intel) audio and others for mobo/Realtek (speaker, USB, optical coax, and digital coax) audio output. Right now the USB audio port on the mobo seems to be worse than the other mobo audio ports.

Other Thoughts: Digital audio output quality of this motherboard to an outboard DAC (Peachtree DAC-iTx) is really excellent.

Pros: Nice feature set, Dual UEFI BIOS. Very low power in sleep mode (1.2w) and power-on idle mode (12w). Very low power using Speedstep while watching HDTV (37w). I7-4770k runs relatively cool, even when transcoding using Quick Sync (max 60 deg.C @ about 65w). Fan speed control is very effective for my low noise HTPC build.

Cons: Fulfilled all expectations except for very annoying HDMI and SPDIF sound output issues -- very unreliable. I watch TV via HDMI directly to my TV using Redmere 1.4 cables with audio return via optical cable from the TV to my dedicated DAC SPDIF optical input. I also listen to hi-rez audio via SPDIF coax digital to my outboard DAC. However, I have to constantly reset sound options after sleep mode, power off/on or switching sound output modes. Oddly enough, Win7 Pro shows swapped SPDIF port IDs - I get SPDIF coax only when I select SPDIF optical. I've tried all combinations of Intel driver updates, BIOS updates, Realtek updates, TV firmware updates, etc. Nothing works. Appears to be an Intel CPU & mobo BIOS issue with finger pointing both ways -- customers caught in the middle. Many other mobo brands including Intel's own have the same issue with Haswell CPUs -- do a Google search on "Haswell HDMI handshake problems"

Other Thoughts: Built as a very low noise HTPC without a dedicated GPU. At this point I'm trying to decide if I send the mobo back for a different brand or buy a dedicated GPU or buy a dedicated sound card.