Pros: I just had to write in after seeing all the bad reviews and state it isn't so. I previously posted on 10/12/2014 about this board and you can read that one. I had an issue with a bios flash the first day which bricked the board but board two has been a dream for six months. I think I'm seeing too many people being legends in their own minds in regards to their tech knowledge. I'm just a ham and egger, figured out most of this stuff by READING and EXPERIENCE, and now have lowered my tech knowledge to 3 stars. I'm an old (61) electrician born and raised in Detroit and spent the first 25 years of my working life there building auto plants, steel mills, power houses, generally the big stuff. I remember back 25 years ago talking to an electrical engineer wile working on a 750 KVA transformer at an auto plant and him asking me what the piece of gear was I was working on. I thought he was kidding. When I told him it was a transformer he was shocked. His schooling was in this (pc) kind of electrical engineering, not distribution. He told me the only transformers he ever saw you could hold in your hand, not something that took a small crane to hoist up to be mounted to the building steel. I see people making lousy reviews and claiming 4 and 5 stars of tech knowledge. Come on, seriously? This is an "enthusiasts" board. An enthusiast is someone who likes to tinker and learn. Six months running mostly 24/7 unless down for tinkering or upgrades and this board has been a rock solid piece of gear. I saw some expert here claim his RAID 0 had died and it was a known fault by him and Asus. That strikes me as odd as mine lasted 5 months and 3 weeks until one of the drives took a dump. It took me several hours to figure that one out but, hey, what else do I have to do if I want to consider myself an enthusiast. Now I'm no fan of Asus customer support, as I was treated very rudely by the girl Kathy over the phone myself ( don't know what kind of pictures of who doing what to keep her job with such a bad attitude over a phone line). I guess what I'm driving at is don't claim you're some expert if you really aren't and if you don't want to build and tinker and be an enthusiast ( you can find most of this stuff on Google by other enthusiasts who have EXPERIENCED similar issues) then let a commercial operation build your box. You're only saving a hundred or two doing it yourself. If you don't care to learn by experience then don't. I think most of these kids passing out support are reading off a script anyway by some engineer who EXPERIENCED this or that issue and here's some stuff you can try to fix it. Kinda like Googling the issue, READING about it and tackling the issue yourself. Either my board is a miracle or it's a pretty good board. It's dual booting to OS's, has seen two different SLI systems installed without a hitch, been in a RAID 0 from it's "birth. While running a self determined o/c of 4.4 Ghz.

Cons: Very poor customer support at Asus from that Kathy girl. She actually tried to encourage me to be upset. I didn't let her. I just USED Google. This is a brand new platform, an enthusiast has got to expect some issues. Geez, I was an EVGA fanboy from X58 and they never got X79 right. Never.

Overall Review: Like I said, a self determined overclock, rock solid done in sixty seconds. Not like putting in the hours and hours we used to do not so long ago through trial and error to find the absolute limits. Amazing how far things have changed in just 5 or 6 years. Do you all remember how much you could trust an SSD when they first came out? And still I'm backing up to platter drives today, thank, luckily.

Pros: Price was nice, under a gig per gig.

Cons: First one arrived in a box demolished by UPS. Second one was packed on the BOTTOM of the box with paper on top. Don't know if it was jarred to death. Samsung support is useless claiming people are having trouble with the supplied dongle. Whoopee, thanks Samsung. Drive was picked up by my EVGA board but four, count them, FOUR attempts to move my system to the drive using Paragon Backup and Restore and over two days, drive was a dud. Think I'll wait until there are more reviews and Newegg learns how to ship delicate electronics. Sent back with refund pending.

Overall Review: Whatever happened to packing peanuts? EVGA still uses them!!!

Pros: Purchased this unit in July of 2014 on a great deal as I knew I was overdue for an upgrade and X99 specs finally made sense to me since X58. I've always been an EVGA fan because of their customer service. If only other mfg. would take a hint from EVGA there would be a whole lot more content PC customers in the world. Anyway, a brief description of GPU's and motherboards of theirs I've owned almost entirely fault free over the years. I had a 7800 series way back when, two 260 GTX's, a 275 GTX, two 470 GTX's, a pair of 780 GTX's, a pair of 980 GTX's and now a pair of 980Ti's. I've also owned an X58 Vanilla board as well as an X58 Classified. Sincerely, almost all these products were fault free from day of purchase through the lifetime I've owned them and I still keep in touch with the fellow that bought the 470's and he's told me no troubles from them whatsoever. The times I did need customer support was usually due to my own ignorance and EVGA held my hand either through the hour plus troubleshooting phone calls or an RMA. BTW, not once did I experience a motherboard problem through all these products. The times I did need their customer service on GPU's were for something like a possible fan noise but not any real hardware issue. Over ten years of product purchases and never a problem being helped by their customer service department. Try that with Asus, who read from a script designed to blame someone else's component or who just have no clue as to what the issue could possibly be. These guys at EVGA know their products!!! I don't know why I trusted Asus in buying my new X99 motherboard but wished I had stayed the course and gone EVGA! My very first BIOS flash with a brand new board at build time blew the BIOS chip and put me two weeks behind in my build. My EVGA PSU has been in my build since September 2014 running 24/7 with a 5960 overclocked to 4.5 Ghz and except for short downtimes to upgrade graphics cards has been running flawlessly since installation. I think that says something to the quality of the products they build. After all my experience with different mfg I have found EVGA to be the one in your corner when an issue arises and see it to the end. If I could, I would put all EVGA equipment in my builds just for the comfort of knowing their customer service is the best in the industry.

Cons: Con's? Probably the only con I can think of is they don't build all the components you need to do a complete build.

Overall Review: If given the choice to install any manufacturers equipment in a build of mine, it would have to be EVGA. I only claim an average tech knowledge due to the fact I see so many uninformed blaming product issues on their lack of knowledge, I don't want to sound like a know it all as I haven't met anyone yet who does know it all..

Pros: I made my purchase direct through EVGA. I've had such a good time since building a custom loop and replacing my EVGA 980 FTW's (SLI) with this card I have spent the last seven weeks trying to locate another. I had to personally get in touch with my contact at EVGA to get my hands on another that ships today. My first card showed up with an ASIC of 73 and would boost to 1380 under Firestrike at stock settings. A minor boost of 100Mhz and no added voltage nets me a boost clock of 1504. I also run this with a boost in memory of 125. Temps at this overclock never exceed 60C. Gaming at this clock setup never goes above 58C in COD AW or BF4.Frame rates in COD (which is what I mostly play) are at 99 on my 2560x1440 Asus PB278 (IPS). I wish they would get their new PB2749Q 144Mhz, Gsynced model to market. I was a bit nervous at first about my cooling loop setup since although it's claimed you can fit a 360mm rad in the top of a Corsair 750D, good luck getting at the hoses unless you remove the drive cage in the front. I instead went with a deep(45mm) 280mm in the top with a 35mmx280mm in the front. The res sits on the floor of the case so 35mm was the limit. Loop is Res to 35mm to 45mm to CPU (5960@4.4 Ghz) to 980Ti Hydro. When the second card shows I will change this out to Res to 35mm to CPU to 45mm to SLI''s 980Ti Hydro's. I Talked with JayzTwoCents and feels theirs enough volume to keep close to the same temps. Cases are personal preference and I love the Obsidian line so a 900D behemoth on top of my desk did not appeal to me. I'd say I took about a 15-20% performance drop from the 980 FTW's but the silence of all Noctua NF A-14's is bliss. My highest Db rating is 45 from 30 inches away. Idle Db rating is 40 so not much increase in noise from 875 rpm to 1300 rpm and that's 5 fans in the case. I'm sure I will recoup my performance drop by quite a bit but still maintain my library silence in my home office once the second card is added..

Cons: Only con I find is price. I had originally considered Titan X's until the 980Ti Hydro's came out. In that respect it saved me $400 in cooling parts. The other con is needing a custom loop to cool these as they are not cheap. I've got around $700 in parts. It's the compression fittings that kill you and now we are about down to one vendor for most parts with the Frozen CPU tragedy.

Overall Review: These card are not for the faint of heart. You must be prepared to set out major coin to do this. I have a ton of cash tied up in this build but I plan on keeping it about 5 years with a possible change in CPU or GPU down the road but I waited from X58 and a 980 Extreme to make this leap to X99 and a 5960.Extreme.

Pros: No coasters. As a previous poster said, it all depends. I have had nothing but great luck using a free burn program, ImgBurn. It will detect your burner and the media and select the optimum burn speed for the combination. Usually slower is better. Since letting ImgBurn calculate the burn speed from media and burner I've had no problems with most brands.

Cons: As always, price. I'm almost convinced it's a price fixing conspiracy for 50 gig discs.

Overall Review: I suppose having a 980 and 12 gigs of 2000Mhz ram helps as I see all 12 threads close to maxed out when burning a movie but even @ 4x I can usually get a perfect copy in less than 30 minutes.