GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Gorgeous matte black design.

On board video, with HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs, giving you plenty of connectivity, and meaning you can make use of Virtu and Intel Quick Sync if you choose.

2 way SLI & X-fire support.

The onboard audio is surprisingly rich. I don't feel the need to install a discrete sound card at all.

Everything is clearly labeled so you don't really even need the manual when setting everything up.

Cons: Gigabyte uses legacy BIOS, which is a bit disappointing considering UEFIs are steadily becoming the norm. But, that is kind of offset by their TouchBIOS (which you can download from Giga's website) which gives you full access to BIOS tweaking from within Windows.

The front panel audio header is placed in a really awkward position, just above the PCI slots near the rear IO.

Unfortunately, that means it takes some fairly creative routing (and possibly an extension cable) to connect to it, and with a high powered gpu installed in the top PCIEx16 slot there is fairly significant static interference when running 3D apps.

A word of advice, try to avoid running your front panel cables parallel to any active power cables. It should help reduce some of the interference, but IDK if there's any way to eliminate it completely with the positioning on this board.

Overall Review: For the price, you'll be hard pressed to find a much better value in the Z68 lineup. It has all the bases covered when it comes to features, and holds up well against much more expensive competing boards.

Pros: A lot of functionality - just need to spend time with this thing up front.
There's a lot of proprietary features if you are dead set on playing with OC ....

Cons: * SATA II and SATA III mixutre. Annoying.
you CAN'T use both raid controllers at same time !! has
* marvell and intel RST. I find this portion of the design Frankenstein-like and ridiculous. I don't think this is necessarily a gigabyte thing so do your research.
* Intel RST SSD acceleration buggy - just get yourself a large capacity SSD if that's your thing and forget all this caching nonsense.
* Make sure you put your DVD SATA cable in port 0 and change bios settings to EFI boot or you won't get your > 2TB functionality.
* Limited BIOS memory - causes conflicts with a variety of PCIe add-ons and the WILL NOT FUNCTION right or at all....

Overall Review: If I had to do it all over again I would go with a different consumer mobo - didn't have all these issues in past with ASUS boards