Pros: Nice Board, with lots of bells and whistles

Cons: See below, but there are several

Overall Review: I have been reading around in many of the feedback comments about asrock boards. The intel sockets anyway. I find it funny that there are so many problems being reported about bent or damaged socket pins. Yet, Asrock is so quick to tell everyone about how the boards are checked before they are sold, and that there is no way that they could come that way from Asrock. However, if you read around the web and even on Newegg you will see people that get memory errors when they power up the board. This is usually being caused by damaged socket pins. I even saw one person who had problems with memory errors upon boot up, and then Asrock tells them to check the socket pins and sure enough, bent or damaged pins. Then the people are so surprised because Asrock blames them To update my problems below. I kept telling Asrock that there were all kinds of problems with my board, and it went from bad to worse. It will not even post now. Just double zeros on dr. debug. It is dead and I am sure it came from the faulty socket in the board. However, it is my fault. What a joke

Pros: This board is abundantly equipped with everything that I could ever want. I spent months waiting on it to become available #1 and #2, drop in price. The price drop never happened and I really wanted it so I bought it. I could not ask for much more, in the way of features, and looks. It is a thing of beauty. I previously had a Sabertooth P67 which has always functioned at a high level so I decided to get a little more out of it. So I put the extreme9 in the closet for while. I got it out this past week and installed it. I will say that I loved the blueooth/wifi adapter, but in the end the wifi does not pick up very well. However, the adapter functions flawlessly, and is a nice addition to such a feature rich board.

Cons: The only thing that was changed in my rig was the mobo. So, regardless of what response is received after this, I just want to make it clear that all other components had been running without issue for at least 1 year. Right when i turned it on I got 55 in dr debug. So I looked up the code and it said no mem was installed. clearly was not true and I knew the mem was good. So I switched it to A2/B2 with no luck. So i fired up google and found that it was a seemingly widespread problem with the board and that it was usually attributed to a damaged socket or socket pins. I thought great!!! I have a bad board. I pulled the mobo and the cpu and sure enough there were socket pins overlapping each other and some were stretched and bent. Luckily this did not ruin my processor. So i straightened everything as best I could with a 10x jewelers loop and stuck the proccy back in. Sure enough I made it past dr. debug and into windows. I said a thank you to the PC gawds, and went on about my business. However, within about 8 hours of this incident, the PC would no longer boot to windows. It kept getting hung on the splash screen or the bios logo screen. I finally emailed asrock who said that was usually a sata issue, so I unplugged all but one drive and that worked. So I then proceeded to re-plug each drive one by one until i found the one that was causing the problem. However, it was not the drive... It was the sata port. I tried re-plugging the cable to ensure proper connection, and I tried several different cables. No luck. So then I just tried a new port with the same drive and same cable. That worked and I have not had a problem after that. However, I am concerned. I can trouble shoot with the best of them, and I can usually get something to work one way or another. However, I have a $400 board that has already bent socket and misshapen socket pins, and a bad sata port all within the first week. So, I decided to take my concerns up further with Asrock.......

Overall Review: I love the Asrock boards. I also have a 970 Extreme 3, and it has been trouble free. My issue is not with the boards, or that they have trouble. That is all part of building. My issue is that when I do have a problem, it then becomes a hassle. Asus has never been an issue, and I have also had great luck with Biostar. Now don't get me wrong, the support staff of Asrock is knowledgeable and polite. My problem is that I am essentially getting the impression that it is, you get what you get. Basically, I was told in so many words that there is no way I could have received a board with damaged socket. In my mind that means that I am being blamed for the damage. So, that issue was nipped in the bud right then and there. No more discussion about that, and the tech wants to move straight to the sata port. Nevermind that I bought a board and then had to repair it myself before use. Nevermind that bend and misshapen socket pins could short and/or cause all sorts of problems down the road. The suggestions about the Sata trouble shooting are that I should try re-plugging it several times to ensure good connection----Check, that has been done. Next, try new/different sata cables to rule out that issue---Check, new cables were tried, plus the original cable is the one that is working now on a different port. Next, Boot in to Windows and hot plug the sata drive into the bad port. Whether that works or not, I don't know. However, I am going to assume that hot plugging it after windows has booted will work, and that the drive will be read. That is not where the problem is though. The issue was that it would not allow windows to load. Regardless of the outcome, I have seen what i need to see. I would have been fine with all of it, right up until the point where it was told to me that a damaged socket is impossible from Asrock's end. As if, they as a company or anyone else are perfect.