ASUS Maximus V Gene LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Excellent product at a very competitive price. You're basically getting top-of-the-line features for the price of a mid-range board. There are almost too many features to count, but chief among the ones I find important are on-board power and reset switches, on-board error display, and rear panel clear CMOS button. The ROG Connect feature sounds really interesting for hard-core OC'ers, allowing you to control the OC settings from a laptop while gaming on your Maximus V Gene. Haven't tried it (nor do I intend to), but it's an example of Asus innovation.

And one more thing - the board just looks great!

Cons: As with most boards, the CPU fan headers (of which there are two, supporting high-end push/pull configurations) will not control 3-pin fans. That's a disappointment, but not unexpected. The three other headers will control 3-pin fans.

Also, it would have been nice if the board came with some straight SATA cables - all it has are 90-degree connectors, which don't work in all situations.

Overall Review: The ASUS utilities are actually pretty effective, even if they could be better integrated. While I've previously used BIOS overclocking techniques, the TurboVEvo included with this board really does make on-the-fly overclocking very easy. I'm also using the Fan XPert to control case fans.

I don't know if it's the board or the CPU, but my 3770k is putting up some impressive OC numbers. I can run it at 3.9GHz with 1.0v, or 4.4GHz at stock voltage (1.14v).

Pros: Dropped to 3-stars after consideration. Generally worked well enough for government. Fast. Lots of room for RAM (up to 32 GB). Decent colors though I would have preferred all black. On board status indicator (very useful). LGA 1155, etc.

Cons: My board had issues with the USB power supply that caused my illuminated mouse and keyboard to flash. The mouse would get struck and characters would repeat while typing when the flash occurred a few times a minute. Very frustrating. The RMA necessity, however, was a repeated Error Code 62 on the on board indicator. Failure to Boot. Bad. The HMDI frequently failed to post and I seem to recall a few other glitches as I read through the one star ratings. I didn't get an Error Code 55, but I did have to reseat my RAM after the first failure to boot. Again, I'm hopeful the RMA goes well and things work as designed.

Overall Review: So far the RMA has been relatively painless. If the returned or replaced board works, then my three stars sill stand. This was one of three builds using a Maximus Gene motherboard. The other two were IV and run flawlessly. This one, my V, had the above issues. I chalk it up to probability.