ASUS P9X79 PRO LGA 2011 Intel X79 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard with USB BIOS

Pros: Solid board, with decent layout, fan controller placement and rock-solid stability. It's a solid X79 platform, and has everything you need and more. I also appreciate the fact there are four USB headers on the motherboard (3X USB 2.0, 1X USB 3.0) so you can have a ridiculous amount of USB slots if needed.

Cons: First board I had was DOA. Multiple pins were bent on the motherboard and/or too long (twice as long as a regular pin!). Second board had some abnormal pins on the CPU socket as well but the board worked.

This board boots up slowly. REALLY SLOWLY. It takes upwards of 60 seconds just to pass the ASUS logo booting up (warm or cold) before it boots to my RAID controller, etc. I have no idea if this is because I have 32GB of RAM installed, but the boot times on the board are painful (especially given I have an OCZ IBIS SSD, which is blazing fast).

Also, the driver CD comes with unnecessary bloatware that suggests you install Chrome, Google Toolbar and Norton AV *before* it gives you the option to install your basic board drivers. Worse, there's no easy way to do an "install all drivers" WITHOUT installing those applications. I find that unacceptable.

Overall Review: Board came with a pre-release BIOS. According to ASUS' site, 0709 is the first release of the BIOS. The board came with 0604 installed, and didn't recognize any add-on boards (e.g. my RAID controller). Upgraded to 0802 (latest on their site) and it fixed the issues.

Pros: Heavy, solid looking board, nice layout, twice the memory capacity, TPU switch is cool, reset and power up buttons on the board nice to have. Overclocked to 4550 Mhz easily. Auto overclock from the Windows tools a nice feature.

Cons: BIOS is spotty. Had to update it to the latest version in order to get a stable Win7 system.

Clear CMOS and sometimes have to wait 60 seconds for the BIOS to return, and it goes to America BIOS? Argh!

Unable to overclock my Corsair Vengenance DDR3 1600Mhz at all, really bites! Tried 1.65v and 2000 Mhz, BIOS crashes immediately.

ASUS was quick to market w/ lots of LGA2011 boards, so thought to give them a try. It's my first ASUS build and may be my last due to a spotty BIOS, probably go back to Gigabyte on my next build.

Overall Review: Marvell SATA is only for data drives. Made the error of connecting the OS drive to the Marvell SATA connector in my first install of Win7.

Be sure to update to the latest BIOS before doing your OS install. Also, download all the latest drivers as well.