GIGABYTE GA-P55M-UD2 LGA 1156 Intel P55 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: As an entry-level, budget board for Intel's i5/i7 series, this board has everything you need.
* Plenty of ports, including 7 SATA and a PCIe 16x for a graphics card. A second PCIe slot at 4x speed exist for other peripherals, and there's two legacy PCI slots.
* Tons of USB ports on the back, and two internal pins for ATX case USBpanels and your internal Memory Card reader.
* Has FireWire (!!) both on the back and a connector for your case panel (rare in a budget case).
* ATX pin connectors (power switch, HDD light, reset switch, etc) are all easily labeled and color-coded. You don't even need the manual to install the pins (but a manual is included).

Cons: The following cons are noteworthy, but none affect me, so I'll give this board 5-eggs. These may be concerns for you, however.
* May not show all available RAM if you're using 1333 or higher speed (I'm using 1066 speed DDR3, and all RAM shows up under Windows 7 64-bit). This may or not be an isolated case or a bug to be fixed with a BIOS update.
* System fan connector is the rarer 4-pin rather than the common 3-pin variety. Use molex connectors for your fans.
* Has two PCI slots and two PCIe (16x and 4x) instead of three PCIe slots. I'd think these days PCI can be phased out.
* No on-board video (not even Intel 4500HD or whatever) so you'll need to add in the cost of a video card (I suggest the ATI HD 4300 series if sticking to a budget).

Overall Review: This is priced near Intel's entry-level 1156 mobo, which has way less features than the Gigabyte. If you're choosing between this and the Intel, this is the easy pick.

Personally, I used this board with Intel's i5 CPU, 4GB of DDR3-1066 RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 4770 for a "budget" PC that easily trumps most people's PCs and definitely all the Macs out there except the ridiculously-priced 8-core Mac Pros.

Pros: This motherboard is a great value. After loading the latest version of BIOS, I have audio, LAN, SATA, IDE, USB, CPU, memory and add in graphics all working well. I am also pleased with how easy it is to overclock the system.

Cons: I had problems with the original BIOS. The USB controller would sometimes see my keyboard and sometimes not. I could unplug and plug in the keyboard to get it to work again. I eventually went to the Gigabyte web site and downloaded a new BIOS from the Windows 7 64-bit BIOS page. I was surprised that the BIOS installer did not work with Windows 7 64-bit. I had to resort to using the "@BIOS" utility that came with the motherboard to install the F4 firmware.

I also had trouble with the "Smart6" system management utility. For some reason, it did not install correctly on Windows 7 64-bit. I could not get it to uninstall either. I ended up re-installing Windows 7 a second time to clean it up. Most of the utilities that come with this motherboard are not needed. After this experience, I decided not to install them.

Overall Review: None