GIGABYTE GA-X48-DS4 LGA 775 Intel X48 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: I have been an AMD guy since 1995 so this was my first Intel self build. I chose this board because I wanted dual 16x pci-e for crossfire. All I can say is WOW. I dropped a Q6700 into this board and some crucial DDR2 1066 and it flys! Bios is pretty easy to understand. The voltage for the ram was a bit odd. You over volt it .4 to get to 2.20 volts(base with the board is 1.8v it seems). Overclocking went pretty well. This board pulls you out of the fire if you set something wrong. It will go thru about 2-3 reboots and then goes back to the stable settings. No having to pop open the case and fine the Clear Cmos jumper. Normally I am an ASUS fan but frankly Gigabyte seems to make rock solid products as well. I can recommend this board to anyone wanting to save a few bucks over those more expensive intel boards. Does overclock, runs solid, good performer. My rig right now is Q6700, 2 3870x2's in Crossfire, WD Raptor Raid 0, 4gb Crucial DDR2, Xfi Fatalty.

Cons: I'll admit the first board I got had a transister rolling around in the box. Rough shipping or a poor solder. Stuff happens. I did the RMA back to newegg and the second board was perrrrrfect! First board still worked with the tiny tiny transister missing but I wanted a correct board.

Overall Review: Seems like a good board for a light overclocker or beginner Intel builder like myself coming from years of AMD.

Pros: The board is configured really well and is really easy to include in a build.

Cons: Gigabyte seems to have a problem with the way they implement the BIOS on their boards. I have purchased two of these boards, and they both eventually ended up in an endless reboot loop. At startup, the machine would try to post, have a problem somewhere, and reboot. It would keep rebooting. I think what happens is that the BIOS somehow gets corrupted so the board tries to load the backup BIOS. For whatever reason, the backup BIOS gets corrupted, and the board gets stuck in a loop trying to flip back and forth between the two BIOS on the board. Clearing the CMOS had no effect. The reboots continued. I have had three Gigabyte boards do this, and won't be buying their boards again. I swapped known good parts to try to get the boards to post, and they never would. I RMA'd the boards and replaced them with a different brand. The new boards booted up without a problem. Gigabyte needs to get the kinks ironed out of their BIOS configuration.

Overall Review: None