GIGABYTE GA-EP35-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard

Pros: Great board, nice layout, nice BIOS settings. Lots of USB ports, eSATA.

Cons: no firewire on board.

Overall Review: a previous reviewer stated you can't install a Zalman 9500LED on this thing - NOT TRUE! i installed it without a problem. the power connector is a little tricky to hook up if you dont attach it before mounting the mobo, but it can be done. it also does not block any RAM slots. this was one of the easiest board installs i've ever dealt with in terms of OS. running vista ultimate 64bit and all drivers were found during install (except for 2 pci cards).

note on OCing - i overclocked my mem too far and kept getting BSODs during OS install. changed to standard settings and everything went smooth. then i went back and tweaked to maintain a stable system.

Running with q6600 OC to 3.4Ghz (380x9) (@26 deg Celcius), 4GB g.Skill PC6400, MSI geforce 512 8800 GTS (g92), CM 650W PSU, Seagate 7200.11 500GB SATA HD, SB X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty, SYBA IEEE 1394a FireWire (had 9-pin header for front of case), all in a CM Centurion case.

Pros: The board has a nice feature set, and is good during the short periods when it works.

Cons: I bought this as a replacement for the P35-DS3R, and have had the same problems with both boards. I've had dozens of bluescreens and other problems, including the bios screen completely freezing (with the latest version). It seems to be an issue with my DDR800 Crucial Ballistix, which works fine in other systems. It causes massive instability in this board, which is inexcusable considering the exact part number for the memory is in the list recommended by Gigabyte. I've tried numerous timings (at stock frequency) and using both 1.8v and the memory's recommended 2.2v.

Both boards have had other small issues, including getting stuck in reboot cycles if a problem occurs. Clearing CMOS manually has always fixed this on mine. This and a few other small issues are forgivable compared to the memory issue, IMO.

Overall Review: Newegg has been very helpful, and even let me RMA the first board (past the return period) after Gigabyte's main phone number seemed to be unavailable for several days during business hours. It's a shame that a good company like Newegg had to foot the bill for Gigabyte's mistakes. I guess they'll make it back, however, since it looks like I'm going to be ordering some new memory from them.