ASUS ROG MAXIMUS VIII RANGER LGA 1151 Intel Z170 HDMI USB 3.1 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Solid hardware and features. USB 3.1, proper M.2 support, plenty of headers

Great software/driver support.

One of the best onboard audio solutions, looks great with optional red LEDs, too.

Good overclocking options for a budget board.

Cons: ASUS customer service has been hit and miss lately. Often times I get responses within hours to 2 days but lately it's been more inconsistent between 3-7 days, one time it took a month for them to respond. Phone support frequently puts me on hold. They're not the worst in customer service but they seem to have been falling down the ranks lately.

The aesthetic, even at this price range, is a bit underwhelming compared to the competition.

Overall Review: ROG board or not, this is a very solid gamer friendly board that happens to be budget friendly as well for all the features and hardware given. If you want a taste of the premium motherboard world this board should satisfy you.

Pros: I have very little pro's about this board, other then it looks nice.

Cons: The ROG series for the Z170 chip set has horrible QVL list for DDR4 DIMM support. In trying to get this motherboard to post past the 55 qcode error, which appears to be a issue with this series of motherboards supporting the Z170 chipset was a futile process.

I went through 2 sets of DDR4 Dimms with his board and the laundry list of troubleshooting before, calling ASUS for support. Which I might add was the worst customer service experience I have ever had and still awaiting my guaranteed Supervisor call back. They advised me to try different ram from the QVL list, i went through 4 sets of ram on the QVL list of various Speeds and brands.

To ultimately get to the magical unicorn RAM that would allow them to either RMA my board or it would work(by the way they said i would need this ram to boot my PC, then go into bios to OC to get it to support any other ram, this was the 3rd Asus representatives information) which was Some Kingston 2133hz DDR4 Dimm HX421C14FBK2/8 from there QVL list. This Ram Speed needed to be tested for them to properly RMA the board because if you don't test a QVL 2133 ram, they would send it back with out repairs of there Techs test the board with 2133 ram and it works. So after 4 days and multiple trips to my pc hardware store for RMA sticks over the thanksgiving weekend. I returned home with the Magical Unicorn Ram to only get a Q55 boot error! (just so you know I did but another motherboard at the store a MSI gaming M5, which booted up flawlessly with multiple DDr4 ram configurations since I know have some laying around -.- ).... After leaving frustrated with the last rep at ASUS and awaiting a supervisor to call me I call Newegg.

A really nice Rep took my call on Sunday, listened to me vent and informed my 30 day warranty was past by one day. But Newegg being the normal champions of Customer service, RMA'd my board for me without another word or begging on my part (which I was willing to do at this point) I wasn't able to secure a refund which I would have liked, but I got a new board on the way and I hope for better luck with this one. Some boards work in this series but not all.

I would not ever recommend a Asus Product to anyone ever again after this experience and the Spencerian with there support.

Overall Review: None