Pros: I'm a first time builder and I was on the fence about this board and the Asus Maximus VI Gene. I'm glad I saved the money and went with this board. It offers essentially the same features, and color scheme, for significantly less money. It fit perfectly in my case with no issues and I didn't have any problems connecting anything. I really enjoyed working on my new build with this board. I plan to SLI in the future so having that as a feature was essential. The OC Genie made it easy to over clock, which is nice because that was a little daunting at first. I was able to fit my Hyper Evo 212 on it and still be able to clear enough room for my RAM. I did use low profile RAM though just incase. The MSI logo lights up which is a nice touch. Processor: Intel i7 4770K Motherboard: MSI Z87M Gaming Ram: gskill ares 8gb 1600MHz GPU: Asus GTX 770 PSU: Corsair cx750m SSD: Samsung 840 Evo 120 GB HDD: WD Blue 1TB Case: Corsair Obsidian 350D w/Window

Cons: When I was doing my external build to check to see if it would post, I kept getting an error message. The first one was my fault since I hadn't properly secured my RAM slots. But there was another debug code that kept popping up that I was racking my brain to try and fix. After some trouble shooting, turns out it the board will show it's not posting properly until you plug in some sort of boot drive. Maybe because this was my first time, but I thought MSI's documentation on this was rather terrible in the installation guide. After that everything was fine and booted up properly. While the MSI logo lighting up is nice, it's mostly covered up by my GPU so I don't get to enjoy it as much as I was expecting. Only 2 case fan headers. But I solved this by using a couple splitters. Not enough to knock an egg but still, one or two more would've been nice.

Overall Review: The included SATA cables are kinda stiff and hard to maneuver. I'm considering getting some aftermarket cables. If you're on the fence about this board, I can say with confidence that you will be happy with it. You should get it.